‘Vulnerability is not about weakness.”

Senior Research Fellow, Dr Ed Morgan from Griffith University shared this during a session on risk and climate resilience. Dr Morgan says that vulnerability is a product of what’s going on and should not be confused with an identity of a place or people.

For most of us in the Pacific, our islands are often termed vulnerable due to our susceptibility to climate risks and its impacts. 

It’s also about protecting our lands, our people, our traditions and customs and more importantly the places we call home and hold dear to our hearts which unfortunately continue to be impacted by these climate risks. 

My name is Vilimaina Naqelevuki and I am the Learning Coordinator for the Shifting the Power Coalition. I am currently in Australia through the Australia Awards Fellowships for a three-week programme, “Scaling Finance for Indigenous Climate Adaptation Solutions” with Griffith University.

I am one of the eleven fellows in this cohort with other fellows from Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and Samoa. 

Throughout the week, we have visited some amazing sites throughout Brisbane including Minjerribah – North Stradbroke Island or as it is more commonly known as ‘Straddie’ learning about the rich history of the Quandamooka country and people from Elisha Kissick. 

We also visited the Redland City Council, Trade and Investment Queensland (TIQ), the Queensland Reconstruction Authority (QRA), Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, and Mount Coot-tha. 

So far, this fellowship has reaffirmed to me that language is central to our work – it’s who we are. Language carries our identity, our values and our histories. And when climate change is spoken about in a way that reflects our realities and our worldviews as Indigenous people, it carries weight. And when it doesn’t, it creates distance and people are left out of conversations.

Building relationships and trust takes time and in the Pacific, we nurture these relationships through time, intention, values, respect and finding common ground.

There is no one perfect ‘strategy’ to address the issues of climate change and how it affects our people. Research Fellow from Griffith University, Ann Leitch shared that she often uses the word ‘strategy’ more than ‘solutions’ because solutions mean that you’re putting an end to the problem while strategies mean you’re finding ways to address the problem. 

Existing funding mechanisms and their processes are often quite hard to navigate, especially for us as Pacific people and sometimes sitting in the discomfort and frustration of having to stay in the fight against climate crisis for so long – something we did not cause ourselves – is needed, to reflect, to regroup and to help us move forward. 

This is exactly why the Shifting the Power Coalition focuses on changing how power and resources flow to women-led and community-based responses – not just about fitting ourselves into systems that weren’t designed for us.

This leads me to something else so profound that I heard from Saui’a Dr. Louise Mataia-Milo, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts in the National University of Samoa, who asked, ‘who takes care of the carer?’

Follow along for more updates, as the fellowship progresses over the next two weeks.

Baru yari (chat soon).