It's that time of year again, when world leaders (along with marketers from brands, oil and gas industry lobbyists, celebs on their private jets) head to the UN climate conference to discuss what to do about greenhouse gas pollution and our warming world. Extreme weather! Rising sea levels! Phasing out fossil fuels! Wait, actually, maybe tone that last one down because it's a bit hard, and our mates in the extractive energy industry aren't keen ... okay, how about: Phasing down fossil fuels? That sounds more reasonable...

Luckily there are also voices of reason at these events.

It's time we listened more to them.

As a group of Pacific Climate Activists head to COP28 in Dubai to tell the world what it's really like to live on the frontline of climate change in a low-lying island nation when one-in-100 year cyclones hit back-to-back, Clare sits down with Ni-Vanuatu woman and activist Flora Vano, to hear about her quest to empower her country's women in the climate movement. Turns out it's going pretty well.

Flora is fab, and her message is one of hope and inspiration as well as hard truths. You need to hear her beautiful words about her connection to the oceans and what we can learn from Mother Nature. Plus she's a fashion fan. We start this conversation with the power of visual communications - Flora loves bright colours and often arrives at events with a statement bloom tucked behind her ear. But don't let that fool you into thinking she's not a serious player.

She heads to COP28 with the demands of the 9,000-strong Women I Tok Tok Tugeta (women talking together) network in Vanuatu, that’s demanding gender equality and climate justice. Flora has a clear message to governments and industry: she wants them to start looking seriously as the losses faced by Pacific Island communities, and others, as a result of climate change they did not cause.

“CLIMATE JUSTICE IS BOTH A MORAL IMPERATIVE AND A PREREQUISITE FOR EFFECTIVE GLOBAL CLIMATE ACTION.” – UN Secretary General António Guterres

ABOUT FLORA Flora Vano, Country Manager, Action Aid Vanuatu, is a Ni-Vanuatu woman leading ActionAid's women-led localised response to climate change and disasters in her country. Flora has also represented the Pacific Nation in various platforms to bring Ni-Vanuatu women's perspectives in both regional and global spaces – including the VCAN (Vanuatu Climate Action Network), at COP27 and now COP28.

Flora’s work with already marginalised communities who face face pre-existing inequalities even before a extreme weather - including women with disabilities, widows, single mothers Women - is focused on growing women’s leadership and empowerment. Through I TokTok Tugeta (WITTT) forums, through which ActionAid Vanuatu was able to organize women to learn more about DRR starting with doing women-led community-based protection assessments and setting their priorities and action plans.

Flora also leads the Women's Wetem Weta (Women's Weather Watch) programme that builds a women's network of disaster preparedness experts who disseminate easily understandable early warning messages to their communities, spanning 30,000 people, when severe weather is forecasted. Besides increasing preparedness and decreasing disaster impacts, the programme led by Flora supports women being recognized as respected and knowledgeable members of their community.

Read more about Flora’s work here.

RAE BEGLEY is a Sydney-based photographer with a focus on climate activism. Her latest work is Strange Quiet - “a meditation on time, an intimate interaction with the ecosystem of the reef, its mystery, its beauty and its quiet fragility” - was photographed on a trip to the Great Barrier Reef as part of the Groundswell Heron Island Fellowship with the Climate Council. The annual residency, led by world renowned reef, climate and First Nations justice experts, brings together cultural leaders to educate them about the science, impacts and solutions to climate change.

Discover Rae’s work here.

NOTES

COP stands for ‘conference of the parties’ to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The 28th conference’ since the first one was held in 1995 in Berlin, takes place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Nov 30 to December 12, 2023.

VANUATU is a county made up of over 80 islands, located in the South Pacific Ocean. Around 1,750 east of northern Australia, it is northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea, southeast of Soloman Islands and west of Fiji.

Vanuatu was colonised by Europeans for hundreds of years, first by Spanish and Portuguese invaders, then by the French and British. In 1600s, Fernandes d Queirós “claimed” it for Spain, as part of the colonial Spanish East Indies, and named it La Austrialia del Espíritu Santo. In the 1880s, France and Britain claimed parts of the archipelago, and in 1906, they agreed on a framework for jointly ruling it. British missionaries came from around the 1840s, along with others seeking to steal land in order to grow cotton, coffee, bananas and coconuts for export. After the independence movement grew in in the 1970s, and the Republic of Vanuatu was founded in 1980.

Like many other low-lying island communities, the South Pacific island nation is on the frontline of climate change and extreme weather impacts. Most of the people live in rural areas and practise subsistence agriculture. Six villages on four of its islands have already been relocated due to rising sea levels, with local water supplies turning so salty they're undrinkable. Also, the mangroves and coral reefs are suffering.

In 2015, Vanutau was it was hit by Cyclone Pam which caused massive, widespread damage. It was called a “one in a 100 years” event, but all too soon another one hit…

CONNECTION Living so close to the ocean means connection to Nature is innate; it’s also an important part of Pacific culture. As Flora says. “Nature talks to us, she tells us when something is wrong. These are things you might not get from a book; it’s not about what you’re taught at school. You have to learn it the way we learn it from the islands.”

TURTLES Marine turtles play a significant role in the customs and traditions of Pacific Island communities, featuring in many stories, songs, and traditions. In Vanuatu, the unique and complex tradition of sand drawings are used to communicate and illustrate traditional ecological knowledge and practices. Via SPREP. Read the rest here.

As Flora says, “If you see turtles hatching further inland you know there’s a severe storm surge coming.”

Rising global average temperature is associated with widespread changes in weather patterns. SURGE STORMS, CYCLONES & EXTREME WEATHER are increasing. In March 2023, “More than 80 percent of Vanuatu’s population of about 320,000 people were affected by the back-to-back cyclones, and Shefa province, which includes the coastal city of Port Vila on Efate Island, was one of the worst-affected areas.

“The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said there was widespread destruction of homes, buildings, food gardens, as well as water, power and telecommunication services. While official assessments of the scale of the loss and damage throughout the islands are still being finalised, a spokesperson for Vanuatu’s National Disaster Management Office said rebuilding homes could take anywhere from a few months to several years.” Via Al Jazeera. More here.

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP Vanuatu is a patriarchal society where, according to Ni-Vanuatuan journalist and editor of Sista magazine: “it’s common for men, even those in senior government positions and who are apparently highly educated, to reason that women should not be in leadership positions because ‘God has made woman to be the helper of man’ or that a woman’s role is in the home or that kastom says that women cannot be part of decision making. It is common for women to internalise those misogynistic beliefs and to believe that is what our value is reduce to – just someone who takes care of others, does what their told and whose voice does not matter.” Read the rest here.

As Flora says on the podcast, women are not traditionally encouraged to speak out, but after the devastation of the cyclones, it was the women who mobilised to move food from the south to the north of the country.

“Women hold traditional knowledge and they are the ones passing on to the next generations. We have survived a lot of disasters and that is with the help of [reading sings from] Nature and with the help of women’s collectives talking together. One community from one island sharing their experiences and and their knowledge with another community, and that is powerful.” - Flora Vano

NANCY DREW is a fictionalised teenaged detective, who first emerged in a series of 1930s novels, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories by American author Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson. The series was revised in the 1970s, with new stories written by Carole Keene, a TV series then on film in 2007.

COP27, held in Sharm el-Sheikh, closed with a breakthrough agreement to provide loss and damage funding for vulnerable countries hit hard by floods, droughts and other climate disasters. This was widely lauded as an historic decision. More here. The fund is expected to see developing countries particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of the climate crisis supported for losses arising from droughts, floods, rising seas and other disasters that are attributed to climate change. While the negotiated text recognised the need for financial support from a variety of sources, no decisions have been made on who should pay into the fund, where this money will come from and which countries will benefit. The issue has been one of the most contentious on the negotiating table.

“PHASE DOWN” vs PHASE OUT emerged out of COP26 in Glasgow. “The language in COP26’s final decision text, now known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, sees countries agree to ‘accelerating efforts’ on the phase-out of ‘inefficient’ subsidies. In a dramatic last-minute intervention, minutes before the outcome was adopted, India proposed a watered-down version of the language on coal, changing to ‘phasing down’ of coal rather than ‘phasing out’. Via New Scientist.

Flora says the former says “You are not seeing my future on the line here. It means you can still open more coal mines and gas fields.”

COP28 “Temperatures in July were the highest they had been for 120,000 years. New Yorkers choked on smoke from Canadian wildfires, tourists fled Greek islands, workers suffered heatstroke in India and Hawaii blazed. As land temperatures broke records, the seas reached hot-tub heat around Atlantic coasts, killing fish and bleaching coral, in a marine heatwave of unprecedented intensity. Antarctic ice is failing to re-form and there are signs that part of the Gulf Stream system may be weakening. Scientists warn we have entered ‘uncharted territory’ for the climate, and people around the world can see the results with their own eyes. ‘The era of global boiling,’ as the UN secretary general put it, ‘has arrived.’ And yet, despite more than 30 years of intensifying climate talks, last year the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions reached record levels. We are still hurtling in the wrong direction.” Read the rest on Guardian UK.

More here.

Flora has two messages for world leaders - she wants them to start looking seriously as the losses faced by Pacific Island communities, and others, as a result of climate change they did not cause. “We need resources to help us rebuild our lives, we need the leaders to hear us, and support we battle more.” And - emphatically - she wants a phase out of fossil fuels.

“I NEED THE SUPPORT OF EVERYBODY LISTENING TO TALK TO WHOEVER YOU KNOW WHAT CAN INFLUENCE A SPACE, OR A COUNTRY, THAT DOESN’T KNOW WHO WE ARE. WE ARE AT THE FRONT LINE; OUR ISLANDS ARE SINKING BECAUSE OF SEA LEVEL RISE AND WE NEED FUNDING RESOURCES THAT FUND WOMEN-LED CLIMATE ORGANISATIONS… BECAUSE WOMEN ARE THE FIRST RESPONDERS.” AND STOP SUBSIDISING FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES! - Flora Vano

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