Tafue Molu Lusama reports from Tuvalu, in the South Pacific

Tuvalu is among the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change and rises in sea level. We struggle to live from day to day. It is so hard to ignore the plight we are living in, and it is more difficult to explain to our people the reality and the link between environmental changes and what is happening on the ground. We continue to witness the loss of islands overnight, depletion of our corals due to bleaching, constant strong winds and cyclones, disappearing fish stocks, the dying out of our traditional plantations due to salt water intrusion into our underground water tables and much more.

As a Tuvaluan living in the midst of these challenges, I see the injustices that cause our suffering. We have no part at all in creating this problem, and yet we are the first to suffer the consequences. How can the actions of developed countries – which create enormous amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere and cause the global warming that leads to our weather pattern changes and rising sea levels – be justified? Why do we have to suffer because of something we did not do?

The avariciousness and greed in the world economic system needs to stop. Justice needs to be carried out – for it is only through justice that countries in the world, like us, will survive in the face of this global challenge.

Tafue Molu Lusama is General Secretary of the Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu (Tuvalu Christian Church)

___

This article was published in the June 2017 edition of  Reform.

Subscribe to Reform