LET us be clear. We are not convened for ceremony but for courage.
Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Lenora Qereqeretabua made the bold statement on Wednesday while opening the Major Groups & Stakeholders Forum in Nadi.
The meeting is an agenda item in the Sixth Forum of Ministers & Environment Authorities of Asia-Pacific.
“We meet here, a day before the officials meeting, not just as representatives of governments, civil society, academia, and business, but as custodians of a region that holds the destiny of more than half of humanity and the health of the planet itself,” Ms Qereqeretabua said.
“The Asia-Pacific region sits at the epicentre of the triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
“For us in the Pacific, this crisis is not an abstract debate, nor a distant threat. It is the rising tide swallowing ancestral lands.
“It is the storm that destroys schools and hospitals in a single night. It is the plastics that wash up on our shores, choking the ocean that has sustained our people for centuries.”
Ms Qereqeretabua said the stakes were empirical, yet within the room lay immense power – the power of people and partnerships.
“Major groups and stakeholders have always been the conscience of the environmental movement.
“You are the innovators, the watchdogs, the community voices that remind leaders like me that policy without people is empty, and ambition without action is betrayal,” Ms Qereqeretabua said.