HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Raina Taitingfong took center stage at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai to share with the world the need to act now to protect the Pacific islands from disappearing.
“Yes, we need education because we don’t know why it is our ocean levels are rising, why there’s all this erosion and how our islands are just one super typhoon away from just disappearing,” Taitingfong, a wildlife refuge specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said.
Taitingfong, an Indigenous CHamoru from Guam, shared her firsthand experience watching the impact climate change has had on the island over the years.
“Growing up on Guam, I have seen it. I did all the fishing with my grandparents, everyone in my family, we are, just as Pacific Islanders, a seafaring community. That is just what we’ve done. So, growing up, I have seen how my ocean has changed, how my reef has changed and how or why all of our fish are now disappearing. What’s happening, and just in my time growing up from when I was a kid to how I am now, it’s completely different. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair to the kids that are in school today. The kids that don’t grow up with these species, the kids that, when I talk about it, they’re not going to know,” Taitingfong said.
Fearing that her future children will know of the island and its beauty only through stories and not experience, Taitingfong called for action now.
“We need action now, we need to stop talking about it and it just needs to happen now. Because if I can see in the last 25 years from when I was 5 years old, in 2050, is there even going to be anything to talk about? Am I still going to have this Indigenous knowledge about my beaches, am I still going to have an island to call home? Are my Micronesian brothers and sisters, and the rest of Polynesia, are we going to have these islands in a couple of years? We might not,” Taitingfong said.
She stressed that the Pacific islands suffer all the impacts of climate change despite not playing big roles in contributing to the demise.
“We can talk about fossil fuels, our islands are too small, we don’t create these fuels, we don’t create what’s happening to us, we are just on the edge of what’s doing it. We need to learn how to react and the only way that we can (is to) be proactive, … is to educate our youth, educate our leaders to learn that the U.S. needs to be the change. We are an American territory, … but again, we need something to change now. We need to stop talking about policy and actually do it,” she said.
She stressed that something must be done now before it’s too late.
“Because by the time we decide something is going to do it three years from now, another typhoon hits. You don’t know what our ocean is going to look like then, you don’t know what our beaches are going to look like, … it’s constantly changing. So, by the time something is created it might have already changed. And I want to create a future and I want to talk to the policymakers that I want a future for my island, for the islands in the Pacific, …. So that our culture doesn’t disappear. Because if our island disappear(s) in 50 years what happens to the people of those islands? Are they still a people when there is no home?” Taitingfong said.
The Piti Channel is seen Nov. 10, 2022, next to the Port Authority of Guam in Piti.
