Page 7 - IB June 2019

We Say

put up with a dysfunctional public health system where over- prices have shot through the roof, making decent housing a mere
worked medical practitioners and drug shortage is the rule not dream for the majority of the country’s 8 million people.
the exception. From 30 May, eight million dreams and hopes now rest on the
It is simply unacceptable, some say criminal, to see the widen- shoulders of the 48-year old Tari-Pori chief of Helu Province.
ing gaps between the haves and the have-nots, where real estate We wish him, and them, the very best.
Climate change

Messages that cut-through

Photo: Greenpeace

It is time to relook at how we are communicating the climate visited our region, Nauru’s Baron Waqa asked the world: “The
crisis facing our region. climate bill is due, who will pay?”
Over the past month, it has felt like climate change targets, The irony of the amount of carbon burned traversing the world
adaptation and resilience have dominated every speech, every to talk about climate change aside, many Pacific islanders return
agenda and every list of resolutions emerging from a series of frustrated by the response they get from the climate conference
weighty regional meetings. circuit; empathy but lack of action; complex (and yes, necessary)
Fiji PM Voreqe Bainimarama told leaders, bankers and builders negotiations over climate financing, but hedging when it comes
gathered for the Asian Development Bank annual meeting in Nadi to emission reductions.
that vulnerability to climate change is not isolated to the Pacific: Fiji, and Tuvalu before that, have been global leaders in the
“The growing ferocity of storms, the rising seas, and changing campaign for climate action, fortified by what Guterres has called,
weather patterns are a global phenomenon, and no people, no their “moral authority.”
economy and no nation will be spared the consequences.” We don’t know the answer to this communications conundrum;
Days later at the Climate Action Pacific Partnership Meeting how to cut through. But we suspect the answer lies with our chil-
he said: dren and young people as much as our scientists and politicians,
“What has set this CAPP event apart from years prior, is our and take inspiration from Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg who
collective recognition that the deadly impacts of our changing has admonished: “You say you love your children above all else,
climate have intensified into a full-blown crisis, the like of which and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.”
humanity has never before seen. It is a climate crisis. It is an Our schools are educating our children for a future that is
ocean crisis. It is the defining crisis of our time. And if we do not financially and environmentally tenuous. Will we give our chil-
act, that crisis will soon escalate into chaos that will consume dren and young people space to put their minds and their time
the entire world.” to perhaps the biggest issue of all facing us?
Then as United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres We Say is compiled with the oversight of the editor

Islands Business, June 2019 7