This content was originally published on The Resilience Shift website. The Resilience Shift, a 5-year programme supported by Lloyd’s Register Foundation and hosted by Arup, transitioned at the end of 2021 to become Resilience Rising. You can read more about The Resilience Shift’s journey and the transition to Resilience Rising here.
Throughout COP26, our own Peter Willis will be talking to thought leaders about climate resilience in this daily video-podcast, hosted by the COP Resilience Hub.
In the fifth episode, Peter talks to Samoan climate activist, Okalani Mariner.
Okalani Mariner describes the roots of her climate activism in her cultural legacy and her fear of loss, and how her own activism brought her family’s experience of changing weather into a larger realization of how humans were affecting the climate. In the Pacific, the changes are coming thick and fast, so helping people change their perception is not hard. Okalani’s activism draws her to help disadvantaged girls and women to develop their skills and livelihoods.
Her message to the leaders at COP is that they should accelerate the movement of funds to help reinforce coastal infrastructure on the Pacific islands.
Her source of hope? Her fellow Pacific islanders! The infrastructure of hope.
