This week, our friends over at the Australian Conservation Foundation are hosting an event, and it’s one we’d highly recommend you check out!

Carteret Atoll
From the Carteret Atoll to Cancun, a report-back by Ursula Rakova from Tulele Peisa

The Carteret Islands, about 80 kilometres from mainland Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, have communities that live a low-carbon lifestyle and yet are bearing the full force of climate change. Coral atolls are dynamic geological features, and the Carteret atoll has been severely eroding and submerging steadily in the last few decades. Severe storms, wave surges and other extreme weather events consistent with climate change prediction are making the atoll inhabitable.

The Elders of the Carterets do not want to see their people scattered and become marginalised. They want to see a systematic transition for the community to maintain the integrity of family units and their culture. They hope to protect their unique identity and to remain self-reliant as a proud people, and so have set up an organisation called Tulele Peisa which means “sailing the winds on our own” in the local Halia language.

Ursula Rakova was recently in Cancun for the UNFCCC COP16 climate meeting, working with the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice to speak for her atoll community who have already suffered the blunt end of climate change.

Check out the video above (or here) to see Ursula interviewed whilst in Cancun, and come along to the event to hear from her in person!