On Tuesday, a young woman from the Marshall Islands will stand before the leaders of the world.
Poet and performance artist Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner has one thing to say at the opening ceremony of the United Nations Climate Summit: “I want to bring my people’s message out to the world, that climate change is a threat we need to take more seriously.” Jetnil-Kijiner, 26, is one of just four people chosen to address the opening of Ban Ki-Moon’s global assembly in New York.
Unlike 125 other world leaders, Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has announced he won’t be attending the summit – a potent symbol of the lack of engagement that so worries Jetnil-Kijiner and other young Pacific islanders.
Born in the Marshall Islands, a nation of 22 low-lying atolls in the northern Pacific, Jetnil-Kijiner studied in Hawaii and California before returning to teach at the College of the Marshall Islands in Majuro. Meeting her last year, she told me about local climate initiatives by the community group Jodrikdrik in Jipan ene eo e Kutok Maroro (Youth for a Greener Environment).
“Together with my cousins, I’ve started this non-profit organisation for youth and the environment. We’re getting young people involved in the climate change movement and getting people aware of it,” she said. “We’re the ones who are getting affected, but sometimes it’s very frustrating, because it feels like no one is listening.”
Chosen from 544 nominees to address the official summit opening, Jetnil-Kijiner will have a global showcase for her poetry, which highlights social and environmental issues.
On her blog Iep Jeltok, she writes: “My poetry mainly focuses on raising awareness surrounding the issues and threats faced by my people. Nuclear testing conducted in our islands, militarism, the rising sea level as a result of climate change, forced migration, adaptation and racism in America.”
Jetnil-Kijiner told me her love of poetry goes back many years: “I was writing poetry from third grade - my first poem was about an invisible elephant! But I didn’t take it seriously until my senior year, when we had two substitute teachers in my English class. They were spoken word artists and it was the first time that I’d heard that style. For some reason, it just clicked and I loved it straight away.”
Through the web, her spoken word performances have received international attention, despite their confronting themes: History Project reveals the anger of young Marshallese living with the radioactive legacy of 67 US nuclear weapons tests at Bikini and Enewetak atolls, while Lessons from Hawaii highlights her emotional scars from racism against Micronesians.
This poetry reached a wider audience after Jetnil-Kijiner performed History Project at the 2012 Poetry Parnassus, the largest poetry festival ever staged in the UK.
“Someone just emailed me to say they were looking for poets from Micronesia to represent at the Parnassus poetry festival, which was one of the events leading up to the London Olympics,” she recalls. “I had to push a bit to get onto the program, because all the poets there were Nobel Prize winners or well established poets. So they sort of took a gamble on me by inviting me to London and it was awesome!”
For many young people in the Pacific, there are cultural taboos about being too outspoken, but her generation of women are navigating the rocks and shoals of community or family disapproval.
“I remember one of my uncles telling my cousin that the History Project poem was too aggressive,” said Kathy. “I definitely feel pressure at home, where Marshallese girls are quiet and nice. However when you look at our past, when you look at our culture, it’s actually rooted in women who were really powerful, women who speak out.”
Despite this, she believes that her slam poetry and spoken word performance is still connected to Marshallese traditions. “With my master’s thesis at the University of Hawaii, I’m studying Marshallese oral tradition and traditional chanting and storytelling,” she said. “I spent the summer in 2013 interviewing my elders and a lot of experts who know about these sorts of traditions. It was really interesting to get a sense of what our culture looked like before colonisation.
“I’m hoping to sort out a way to incorporate spoken word with our traditional way of chanting and our traditional storytelling,” she added. “We’ve been expressing ourselves since the beginning of time, so we can do that now through different media, through spoken word or writing and storytelling.”
Other young Pacific women are also speaking out about climate change.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was first adopted in 1992. At the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, 17 year old Christina Ora of the Solomon Islands stood before the plenary to highlight the concerns of young people: “I was born in 1992. You have been negotiating all my life. You cannot tell us that you need more time.”
Five years on, however, the UNFCCC negotiations are still deadlocked and there is little prospect of finalising an effective climate treaty in Paris next year. For this reason, Ora will again address a panel at Ban Ki-Moon’s climate summit, to repeat the same challenge to world leaders: “We wish for you to listen to the voice of Pacific Islanders, to listen to the vulnerable countries. Because in your hands, you hold our future, our life.”
The UN secretary general hopes that the summit will catalyse action from key industrialised countries, which are resisting any legally binding commitment to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Australia is one of the world’s major coal exporters, but the Abbott government is working hard to avoid any new commitments on climate change. Prime minister Abbott will not attend Ban Ki-Moon’s climate summit this week, unlike 125 other heads of government. He has also indicated that climate change will not be on the agenda of the G20 meeting, when Australia hosts global leaders in Brisbane this November.
Canberra is also reluctant to provide the necessary funds to assist developing countries to transition towards new energy systems. Last year, at the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the Abbott government announced it would not contribute to the new Green Climate Fund, an innovative global mechanism to provide finance for developing countries to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change.
If Abbott won’t go to New York to hear the concerns of young islanders, they’ll bring the message to him.
For months, members of the Pacific Climate Warriors network – from Vanuatu, Tokelau, Kiribati, Tonga and the Federated States of Micronesia – have been building canoes. They’ll be arriving soon in Australia to highlight the role played by successive Australian governments in blocking stronger international action on greenhouse gas emissions.
On 17 October, canoes crewed by the Climate Warriors will blockade the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle, to highlight the contribution of Australia’s fossil fuel industry to global warming. These young islanders have defiantly rejected the image of Pacific peoples as victims of sea level rise. In their own words: “We are not drowning. We are fighting.”
That spirit will also be seen at this week’s climate summit. Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Christina Ora and other young Pacific islanders have one clear message for Australia and the world: the time for talk is over, the time for action is now.