 I feel Pacific Island nations can lead the fight for climate action by declaring this climate emergency. It is an emergency. At the moment I believe we still have not acknowledged the level of seriousness and how it impacts our lives. If we do not declare it as an emergency then we are not going to act as if though it is an emergency. My name is Gladys Habu. I am a very passionate climate advocate here in the Solomon Islands. One of our favourite things to do when we go back into the villages to visit this island called Kale. It was home to my grandparents decades ago and it was so beautiful. White sandy beaches, lots of trees and wildlife. Kale has been one of the really important islands that we have been tracking. The island was 50,000 square metres in size. It decreased in size significantly to the point that was completely wiped off the map unfortunately. These aren't little sand caves with a few shrubs on them. These are large islands with dense rainforest vegetation that people would live and camp on. It was unbelievable that a whole island could disappear in less than a decade. The loss of Kale is a major push behind all the climate advocacy that I do today. Communities have been lost. People have been displaced. Our islands are sinking and with it not just a loss of biodiversity but our identity and you know I would say our people are fighters because despite all this loss we are still out here and waking up every day facing the consequences. They're building things like stone walls along the coast to protect the land from further erosion. They are also building their homes on higher stilts. We are doing what we can. Globally sea level rise is really being driven by human induced climate change. These extreme rates that we've seen in the Solomons over the last couple of decades are exactly the sort of rates that we're predicting the entire earth will experience as an average in the latter half of this century. So these people in the Solomons haven't caused this problem. Their footprint on the planet is tiny. Their per capita emissions are minuscule. And that is what hurts me the most because we're not the ones who are entirely responsible for what is happening to us today. If we are to solve this crisis then we need to actually go back to what's causing it and reverse that to help our planet. In terms of what can be done it's really simple. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that will in turn reduce our committed sea level rise. Gladys and I have worked together for sort of eight years now. Oh man, honestly I acknowledge Dr Simon Albert for helping to really amplify my individual voice but also that of my community and my country. We've been able to do that through large media organisations in BBC and CNN. We did a documentary. I am so humbled to say that this documentary was then used by BBC as a teaching material for secondary schools in the UK. There's an increasing level of skepticism questioning the science. I believe these human stories explaining the real life impacts. This is not some projection of what may or may not happen in the future. This is now. Sometimes it's just horrifying just to see how things are changing. On our doorstep in the Solomon Islands fellow human beings suffering as a direct result of our high per capita greenhouse gas emissions. So hopefully those sorts of stories will try and cut through some of this politics and divisiveness and really start to convince the broader public that this is an issue that we need to take some powerful steps on. Even in the climate spaces, COVID has distracted a lot of climate action activities around the world but making the most of the virtual world during this pandemic has helped us to engage with more young people I would say. I've met a lot more young activists in this journey than I would have ever imagined without this pandemic so it has worked in our favour in that sense and it has also taught us an important lesson in that even with such a pandemic in place we could still come together and discuss on actions that we can all take together as a community. As part of my climate advocacy I will be participating in the upcoming high level environmental ministers meeting and we are having environmental ministers come around the Pacific to participate in this virtual conference to discuss climate action in the lead up to COP26. Part of what I'll be doing is to really emphasise my call to Pacific Island governments to declare a climate emergency. My good ministers, act now. Declare a climate emergency in your respective countries before entering COP26. Let us genuinely express to the world that this crisis is indeed a matter of life or no life for our Pacific people. Thank you very much. So we've got the ability to turn this ship around but we need to make some powerful decisions now. There's no other roadway to minimising these impacts on people like Gladys' family but also ultimately on my family and your family. There's still a lot of people in rural areas that don't quite understand why these things are happening to us and so in a way I'm also helping to educate my people about what is happening and what our rights are in this space and what we should all be fighting for together as a community.