Dame Meg Taylor not happy with global response to climate change
Relocating communities from the Pacific to countries that have more land is not the solution in combatting climate change says the secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat Dame Meg Taylor.
During a panel discussion at the CIVICUS World Assembly, the flagship event of the International Civil Society Week in Suva, Dame Meg expressed her disappointment of the global response to climate change. “In every [Pacific] community you visit there is consciousness of what is happening and you've got our governments that are very vocal on this issue,” she said.
“But it's the response from those [actors] that are very powerful … often, that 10 million people in an ocean that is half the world is not really significant – that it's all going to go underwater anyway.” Dame Meg said she has heard comments such as “why are we bothering with this?” from people on boards that allocate funds towards development in Pacific countries.
The secretary general highlighted to the audience of civil society organisations that “every life is important” when it comes to issues of climate change. “One thing I learned from the Prime Minister of Tuvalu is you never talk about population – every life is important,” she said. “Always focus on the issue rather than bring it back to the population.” Dame Meg called for the larger countries of the world to take climate action so that people of the Pacific could retain their homes and livelihoods.
“We need the big people, the big economies to come to the table on this and look at what they can do. Here, we [the Pacific countries] are – we've hardly contributed anything to this.”
During the same panel discussion, Greenpeace Canada executive director, Joanna Kerr said she immediately noticed the level of climate change awareness and activism when she arrived in Fiji.
“My taxi driver, the first thing he said to me was the weather has been a bit funny, we're having this hot weather and rain – it's climate change,” she said. “There's not many parts of the world where the first thing a taxi driver will say is ‘climate change'.”