The biggest challenge is that the people affected are still the ones least heard. As an Indigenous man, I’ve seen how climate change has shaped daily life for our people, yet our stories are often missing from the tables where decisions are made.

There is deep emotional weight in watching the soil and waters that raised you become more and more fragile, but forgetting that it is the families, cultures, and the ancestral connection to land/country that are at stake. We say this a lot, but real climate action must center the voices of those who carry the memory of the land.

As a blak Islander, my work in climate is rooted in community, culture, and lived experience. It began through health literacy work in PNG, where I witnessed how climate-driven disruptions like food insecurity and displacement shape health outcomes. This led me to base my work around building culturally grounded resilience strategies at all levels.

As the Co-Founder of Archive Ples, a storytelling platform documenting Pasifika lived experiences, we challenge extractive narratives about the Pacific and amplify native knowledge systems that have sustained our relationship with the land and the waters for generations. Visual storytelling is a powerful tool for reframing climate conversations and asserting Pasifika voices in global spaces.