Not just a sinking island: Tuvaluan of Irish ancestry fights climate change and despair

Whenever Eliala Fihaki goes through passport control at an airport, she can tell by the look on the immigration officer’s face they aren’t immediately familiar with what’s stated as her place of birth.

Tuvalu, it says. “The sinking island,” she’ll prompt them. “Then they know.”

She doesn’t like to reference her home place like that, feeling it reduces Tuvalu to a lost cause.

“It’s a very negative association. I just wish people knew that we’re not only coming here to ask for money and beg for help.

“There’s more to us than that – our identity, culture, language. We are not defined by despair.”

A special event in Inishbofin last September made that very clear.

The Climate Gathering movement brought together environmentalists, climate campaigners, community activists and people from religious, political and artistic backgrounds to discuss how to support climate action.

Fihaki was among them, delighted to visit the birthplace of her ancestor, Jack O’Brien, who, like many Irish before him, set sail for Australia four generations ago but, unlike many others kept going to Tuvalu.

While those gathered on Inishbofin would marvel at how far she had travelled, Fihaki would insist Ireland and Tuvalu were closer than they realised.

“We are people of the ocean. It has never separated us from the world. It has connected us to it,” she said.

Now attending the Cop31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, she joined in another Climate Gathering event.

[ Gridlock on the streets, logjams on climate: Cop31 gets off to a low-ambition startOpens in new window ]

This one was aimed at rallying civil society support for Ireland and Tuvalu’s joint hosting of the second international Transition Away From Fossil Fuels conference next summer.

The conference grew from impatience among dozens of countries that Cops alone were not achieving fossil fuel phase-out.

Fihaki, who now lives in New Zealand with her Tongan-New Zealand husband and their four children, is enthusiastic for the process.

Anything that spurs action on the climate challenges facing her birthplace, and all small island states in the Pacific, will help, she says.

She travels back to Tuvalu as much as possible and says she would have liked never to leave but needed to provide more secure futures for her children.

“My mother and siblings are there and I try and go back every now and then when I have the money.

“I don’t care if I use all my savings – when your heart longs for something, you have to follow it.”

Tuvalu wants to physically host next year’s conference, which will be a huge logistical challenge for a tiny island.

Fihaki says Ireland’s support with finance, personnel and expertise will be important.

“But it’s not only resources. I think the emotional support will be important – connecting to the heart will give us strength.”

[ Climate extremes ‘off the charts’ as countries gather for Cop31 summitOpens in new window ]