One of the organisers of last week’s In the Eye of the Storm Pacific climate change conference in Wellington says the cyclone that has devastated Fiji is a harbinger for what’s ahead for other Pacific nations.
Pala Molisa says climate disruption is disrupting with weather patterns in the region, so there will be more extreme storms which last longer.
He says many here fail to understand the unfolding climate crisis because the New Zealand Government has little interest in discussing it, and people are failing to connect all the dots.
"When we are talking about climate change we are talking about the rise in greenhouse gasses but also you can't separate global warming from other forms of ecological and social crises – the mass extinction and acidification that is going on in our oceans, the mass die off of sea life, the plastic pollution, and also social crises, social inequalities we have the experienced over the past 40 years," Dr Molisa says.
He says indigenous peoples have insights and traditions that can help the response to climate change.
