The ocean is not a backdrop for life in the Pacific.
This is the source of this cause.
As the Tongan-Fijian writer Epeli Hau’ofa wrote, the sea is « our path to each other and to all others » – it is the connective tissue of who we are, rather than a border that isolates us.
For generations, the communities of Tuvalu, Fiji and the enlarged Pacific have learned to read and understand the moods of the ocean, to respond to its warnings and to transmit this knowledge through traditions and methods that determine how we fish, plant and build.
What we are experiencing today is different.
Rising seas, extreme weather conditions and a warming ocean change the conditions that have shaped our knowledge and our way of life.
We are not writing about a future threat – the governments of the Pacific rule in the middle of it.
And it doesn’t come back to everyone in the same way.
Climate change is amplifying the inequalities already present in the Pacific and can create new inequalities.
They also provide much of the unpaid work that unites communities – managing household water supplies and deciding how it is distributed, growing and preparing much of what their families eat, maintaining gardens, picking on reefs, caring for children and the elderly.
When a cyclone strikes or a harvest fails, these gaps widen.
Women absorb more of each shock with fewer resources to rely on and less power in the way the reaction is shaped.
What climate assessments do not capture, climate financing does not reach.
Community resilience is built through the daily work of women.
Across the lower atolls of Tuvalu, women contribute directly to food security – taking care of gardens, picking shellfish and more in the reef plains, and using the income from what they produce and sell to feed their families.
Shell crafts and other traditional crafts are an additional source of income, transmitting knowledge and practices from generation to generation of women.
As reefs and shores change, women risk losing not only this income and food, but also the knowledge and culture related to their production.
When tropical cyclone Ana hit Fiji in 2021, a landslide displaced families in the village of Nabavatu.
Women who earned their income by collecting and selling shellfish had to lose this livelihood as the community prepared to settle inland and organized to help build new livelihoods.
After tropical Cycle Pam hit Tuvalu in 2015, damaged boats disrupted fishing, while women fed displaced families despite destroyed kitchens and water reserves.
The women of the Pacific are already the answer – community by community, disaster after disaster.
Yet too much of their work remains underestimated.
What climate assessments do not capture, climate financing does not reach.
When women’s work is not measured, it is not financed.
When their knowledge is absent from the plans, their needs are absent from the response.
Global commitments and goals are there: the Belém Gender Action Plan on gender-sensitive climate action and the goal of increasing climate funding to $1.3 trillion per year by 2035.
What matters now is whether they change what is happening on the ground – whether women’s realities are captured in the data, whether their knowledge shapes climate plans, and whether finances reach the women who do the work.
The Pacific is already turning these commitments into action.
At the initiative of Tuvalu, Pacific leaders recently approved a Gender and Climate Action Pact that commits the region to lead the implementation of the Belém Gender Action Plan through increased recognition and inclusion of female leadership, better climate data reflecting the reality of women and funding that affects women and communities.
The Pacific Resilience Facility – a Pacific-led funding facility that is being implemented – offers resources to put resources in the hands of women already at the forefront of resilience and adaptation in the field.
We still know what is needed: emissions must fall quickly enough to keep 1.5°C within range; the Belém Gender Action Plan must be supported by the resources necessary to implement it; And the $1.3 trillion goal must be translated into climate financing that affects women and communities.
Next November, we will meet in Antalya, Turkey, for COP31, where Australia will preside over the negotiations.
Earlier this month, the Pacific hosted the pre-COP in Fiji, as well as a leader event in Tuvalu, putting the realities and priorities of small island states in development directly on the road to Antalya.
Each fraction of a degree in turn translates into more of this unrecognized work: increased pressure on household water supplies and food systems, more people to care for, more disrupted livelihoods.
The temperature objective is not a separate problem from that of the genre. It determines how much adaptation work Pacific women will do, and how often.
Pacific women cannot be expected to bear the losses of a crisis that they have contributed so little to create, to take on the unpaid work of reconstruction, and then to fight for a fraction of the funding for their communities.
They are already adapting, rebuilding and leading. They don’t need the world to chart their path.
They need those who hold the greatest power – and the greatest responsibility – to do their part, so that they can continue to map theirs.
