The Traditional Custodians of the land we are gathered upon, I werelevu I Sawaieke – Yavusa Naua – Na Vibulou Na Taukei Naua, and I extend that respect to the Vanua o Nadi
Excellencies, Heads of State and Government; Ministers, Ambassadors and Heads of Delegation; church and community leaders; our young people; ladies and gentlemen; and members of the media
Ni sa bula vinaka and good evening.
Let me begin by thanking the chiefs and people of this land for opening your home to the world. You have done it as your ancestors did, with dignity and with generosity.
Excellencies, you have just been received according to the oldest protocol in this country. Allow me to say something about what you have seen, because in Fiji nothing in a ceremony is decoration. Every act carries meaning.
The yaqona – or Kava as you may know it – presented to our hosts is a sevusevu. It is not merely a gift in the way the world usually understands gifts. It is a request: we have come, and we ask to be received. When it is accepted, and the bowl is shared, something changes. A visitor becomes a guest. And to be a guest, in our understanding, is to be bound to your hosts, and they to you, each carrying a duty of care to the other.
I begin with that idea because it describes the relationship we hope to build with you this week. And it describes the relationship the world needs with the Pacific, and with the ocean we call home.
In this part of the world, we greet each other with the word bula. It means life. Every time we meet, we wish life upon one another. Excellencies, that is what we are here to discuss this week. Not abstractions, not clauses and brackets, but life. The life of a village. The life of a reef. The life of a nation whose highest ground is only a few metres above the sea.
We asked you to come to the Pacific because some things cannot be understood from a distance. In the days ahead, you will stand on Tuvalu’s shores. There, the climate crisis is not a forecast. It is the king tide at the door, the salt in the garden, and the hardest of questions: how long can a community stay?
For us, land, sea and people are not separate things. They are one, and we call that whole the Vanua. What harms one part harms all. That is not sentiment. It is a way of knowing the world that has kept the societies of the Pacific alive for generations.
Our elders were readers of signs. They read the colour of the sky at dusk, the mood of the tides, the flowering of the trees, the movement of the birds. From these, they knew when to plant, when to fish, and when to move to higher ground. It was not superstition. It was attention, and attention kept people alive.
And when danger came, the davui was sounded. Its call carried two meanings: come together and take heed.
Excellencies, the Pacific Ocean is sounding the davui now. And it is not sounding it for us alone.
This ocean covers roughly a third of our planet. It is the engine room of the world’s weather. When its waters warm and El Niño gathers, the effects do not stop at our reefs. They travel. To rainfall and harvests on every continent. To floods in one place, and drought and fire in another. To the price of food on tables in places that may never have heard of a country called Fiji. What begins in our waters arrives in yours.
So please hear what I am saying, and what I am not. I am not asking you to look at the Pacific out of sympathy. I am asking you to look at us as a bellwether – indicating the scale of the challenges to come. Frontline communities are where risk becomes visible first. Rising seas. A warming ocean. Water that fails. Food that does not come. These are not Pacific risks. They are human risks. They are shared risks. But their tangibility is most pronounced and obvious here in the Pacific where our climate and ocean collide, where land is scarce, and nature has always been dominant.
Earlier I spoke of the duty of care between guest and host. But there is an older truth beneath it. We are all guests of this earth. None of us owns it, and none of us can leave it. Island or continent, small or large, we share one ocean, one sky, and one set of consequences. It is a strange thing for a nation of islands to say that no one is an island. But it is true.
That is why the message the Pacific carries is the simplest one: heed the warning while there is still time to act on it. Keep 1.5 within reach. Make finance reach the communities that need it. And give the ocean the seat at the negotiating table that its role in our climate demands.
We ask that, this week, we engage in the spirit of talanoa: open, inclusive and honest dialogue. Let us be generous in listening, slow to blame, and focused on finding solutions that serve the common good.
Excellencies, the ceremony is now complete. Tonight, the talanoa continues around the table, where I will say a few more words. I promise they will be shorter than these.
Until then, you are our guests. You are under the protection of the Vanua, and you are family.
Welcome to Fiji. Vinaka vakalevu. Ni sa bula vinaka.