Headfirst (Literally) into the Unknown
Wearing my Dear World T-shirt and getting my official registration badge at Nadi, Fiji.
Last week I was in Nadi, Fiji. I had taken myself there on a sudden impulse to attend the free Pre-COP31 Stakeholders Knowledge Sharing conference on Climate Change.
I figured that as a concerned Australian citizen and artist, I had a stake in what was going on in the Pacific. The flight was only two and a half hours from Coolangatta airport, closer than many Australian cities. I booked a homestay and suddenly I was there!
Unknown and in another country. Brave or foolhardy or both…
I really didn’t know what I was doing. I treated it as if I was at an artist residency, collecting impressions of the environment, the conversations and the landscape for future use.
My homestay host took me to the pre-conference church service where the local school children sang and performed dances about protecting mother earth. The energy was high and so was I. It was such an emotional service as all the heads of the Fijian spiritual faiths came together to remind us that the earth is sacred and it’s a moral duty for us to look after it in stewardship.
At the conference the next day, all the women and men were in colourful, formal outfits. Many women had hibiscus flowers in their hair. The atmosphere was buzzing with bright colours, sumptuous surrounds and optimism. Heady stuff.
I was so proud of being videoed by the World Food Program Fiji on that first day that I felt like I was on Cloud Nine.
Oh dear. You know what they say. Pride comes before a fall.
Yes I had a fall. It was more of a stumble over a black media box on the ground on the side of the audience chairs, but the stumble turned into a collision with the chairs and down I went.
To say I was in shock is an understatement. The pain kicked in next, all along my lower back and hip.
The good news was that I didn’t break any bones. No blood was spilled.
It was at the end of a panel session convened by a speaker from Greenpeace and I had been keen to talk to him after the session finished.
I never did get to have that conversation. Oh well.
I was helped up by many hands who were all concerned for my welfare. One of the conference organisers took me to a suite in the Crowne Hotel where the conference was being held and made sure I was being attended to by the paramedics. After an hour of lying on my stomach with a cold pack on my back, I was able to return to the conference in time for lunch.
The rest of the two days were a bit painful but I was determined to be in the rooms where important discussions about the future of planet earth were being held.
One thing every session kept stressing was the imperative to stay below the 1.5degrees of global warming. Once that line is crossed the damage to vulnerable Pacific nations will start to become irreversible.
It was so very humbling to be listening to their experiences of flooding, water tables rising, land and farming area shrinking and the impossibility of access to health services, especially for the most vulnerable during high tide events.
I’d initially thought i could deliver postcards I had made as part of my Dear World art project. However the politicians and Australian ministers were at another venue which was not accessible to the general public.
The opportunities for networking were great though and after the conference I took a day off to do a little sightseeing around Nadi.
Who should I bump into but the media assistant to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen. I handed him some postcards I had in my handbag and he assured me he would give them to the minister. So perhaps that small gesture might have some bearing on the outcome of the oficial COP31 talks in Ankara, Türkiye next month.
One thing is clear from that week. It’s going to take people power to change the world. I'‘d like to say we can rely on our governments to do the right thing in the tiny window there is before reaching 1.5 degree overshoot. But we are up against big invested fossil fuel corporations whose influence spreads into all areas of power and decision making.
It’s up to all of us to put the pressure on. It needs all of us to take collective action.
As all the speakers kept reinforcing:
“1.5 degrees is the thin line between survival and extinction. If the Pacific falls, there is no line behind us. Phase out fossil fuels!”
A welcome sign and help desk at the Nadi airport setting the tone for the event.
An insert in the Fiji Times newspaper put out by The Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australia Institute. Sometimes I felt embarrassed being an Australian in the room with all those affected by Australia’s fossil fuel pollution.
Sign at the Nadi airport paid for by the Australian Conservation Foundation.
