Every year Gladys Habu would travel by boat across the turquoise water, excited to visit her grandparents on the island of Kale. It was once home to many families and had a rich ecosystem brimming with life.
But due to coastal erosion there is barely any evidence of the island’s existence, except for a lonely tree trunk sticking out of the water.
“I honestly still can’t believe it today,” 26- year-old Gladys says. “Every time I go back, it’s like it was never there at all.
“I began documenting various observations of climate events from a very young age, particularly of Kale island which was home to my grandparents.
“In 2009, I noticed it was strikingly much smaller than it used to be during my childhood.
“And by 2014 it was completely submerged underwater. There’s that stump sticking out of the ocean. It was heartbreaking.”
Watching the island disappear spurred Gladys to raise the alarm about how the climate crisis was taking hold in her country.
She was crowned Miss Solomon Islands 2019/2020 for her campaigning and also received an honour from the Queen, the Commonwealth Points of Light Award, for her climate change work at home and around the world.
“This personal loss of Kale prompted my journey as an international climate advocate so that’s why I do it today, for my people and for my country,” Gladys says.
“Kale used to be a really big island where it was home to not only my grandparents but it had all these different species of plants and animals. It had a whole mangrove ecosystem, turtles used to come and lay their eggs there, it was really beautiful.
“By 2014, we’d already lost Kale and four other islands in the Solomon Islands itself.”
The South Pacific nation’s rate of sea level rise is almost three times the global average.
And while this cannot be blamed solely on global warming, people in the Solomons are feeling the effects.
Gladys, who works as a pharmacist in the capital of Honiara, says: “It makes us more vulnerable, especially when we have a lot of low-lying communities and islands.
“These islands have many communities that are still living there that don’t know where to go.
“They are struggling to relocate and in spite of all this, they still stay and try to adapt
in different ways, but sea level rise has really affected not just their land for gardening but also impacted their water supply.
“It’s also ruining sites such as graveyards, which is I think very sad.” The resilient people of the Solomon Islands are adapting to climate change by using simple and traditional methods.
They are constructing homes on higher stilts above water if they cannot relocate and building stone walls to protect them from the sea.
“We’ve also seen communities who are planting mangroves to help prevent further erosion but also to encourage the mangrove ecosystem to thrive, because that is where many rural people get their protein,” Gladys says.
“What we are doing is mostly still very simple, traditional adaptation methods, but I believe we can definitely tap into accessing more support and more finance to make the most of the new technologies or methods that are out there to help our community.”
The campaigner wants to make clear her fellow citizens are not victims but are fighters on the climate front lines.
She explains: “No one here is crying every single day because we wake up having to walk through really high tides or stormy weather or paddle our canoes out further than we used to to get water for drinking.
“We do it because there is no other way. And so, in that sense, I see our people as fighters and this is the spirit that I believe everybody should have to fight for climate justice.
“And I believe the international community should not portray our people as victims, but rather accept where the damage has started and try to correct it rather than looking at us and saying, ‘OK, but we can’t do much because that’s where they live.’”
The issues are not unique to the Solomon Islands as Germany suffered floods that claimed 200 lives last month while deadly heatwaves have caused wildfires in Greece and Turkey.
Scientists fear human climate disruption is already making extreme weather worse than they predicted. It is a gloomy picture but Gladys says she is encouraged and inspired by young people who are adding their voices to call for action on global warming.
She says: “I definitely think that there’s hope for a better future. I know there are a lot of young people now that are coming out, being more vocal, talking about these issues more.
“And they are even making very important changes not just in the community but at the higher levels with governments.
“Because of that, I also encourage more young people to come join this fight with us because it is our future that we are fighting for.
“And we need to fight for it or otherwise no one else will.”
