A new initiative aims to invite Pacific Islanders living in Australia to embrace the principles of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ and become positive agents of change for their homelands by bringing their voice to the fight against climate change.
Fr Asaeli Rass SVD says the Laudato Si Movement, in partnership with the Edmund Rice Centre’s Pacific Calling alliance will encourage ex-patriot Pacific Islanders to work for a better climate future for their home countries.
“We’ve been working with Pacific Islanders who are living in Australia to inform them of the effects of climate change in their own countries,” Fr Rass says.
“Especially around issues of rising sea levels, changes to rainfall, drought, cyclones and soil erosion.”
Fr Rass, who is Fijian-Tongan and based in Sydney, says that on a personal level, he would like Islanders to be a part of the solution for the problems facing the Blue Pacific.
“So, as part of that, we are encouraging them to write to their Members of Parliament or to the government ministers and urge Australia to honour the climate targets in the Paris Agreement and Kyoto Protocol.
“Instead of working in partnership with elders in the Pacific, the idea is to work with their sons and daughters living in Australia and encourage them to take up the cause.
“As local citizens here in Australia, Islanders can do much to raise awareness of the climate issues in the Pacific and be a voice for their community.”
Fr Rass says the Pacific Calling Partnership is also reaching out to ecumenical church leaders to join the initiative.
“We are already having many of the church leaders saying yes to joining in,” he says.
He says he hopes the initiative will help to highlight the Australian Government’s inconsistent policies in relation to climate change.
“For instance, how is it consistent to increase mining in north Queensland in light of the Federal Government’s commitment to what it has signed up to achieve in 2030,” he says. Fr Rass is calling for adaptation assistance and real action from the biggest polluters to help support the resilience of Pacific-led initiatives.
“The latest sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report highlights that fossil fuel infrastructure is not the way to go now. It is not sustainable anymore. Follow the physical science and observations of indigenous peoples about the environment. They will tell us that a carbon-based economy is an existential threat for many poor peoples of the world.
“And yet, we need also to be aware that this transition will cost people jobs, for example, in the mining industry, so our faith tells us we need to ‘hear the groans of the poor’ and that includes those who will lose their jobs.”
“We need to find a balance.”
Fr Rass says he hopes the Pacific Islander initiative will provide a positive path forward for those who wish to speak out in defence of their homelands which are being so badly affected by climate change.
“I see it as passing the torch generationally,” he says. “It’s a way of maintaining the cultural wisdom they have brought with them to Australia and not being afraid to speak up for their people and low-lying islands or risk being swamped by rising ocean.
“This gives them something positive to do, turn up the heat on climate change, apart from attending protests, to have an impact so that they can be agents for change rather than having constant reminders that we are victims.”
PHOTOS
TOP RIGHT: The scene in Fr Rass's village in Fiji, taken after the devastating cyclone Yasa in Dec 2020.
BOTTOM LEFT: The new, relocated village of Vunidogoloa on Vanua Levu, the second-largest island of Fiji- an exercise in climate change adaptation from the coast to the highlands.