Communities are shoring up seawalls with old tyres.

I was raised on the beautiful island of Tonga.

When I was a child, my parents and grandparents would come out every morning to look at the horizon. They would look at the clouds and see the patterns to understand what laid before us that day.

Nowadays, things are different.

Children playing and swimming at the beaches see the patterns in the clouds and run back to alert us to a disaster.

This is now becoming a regular occurrence.

After storms, I visit my people and I am always lifted by their resilience and their spirit of helping each other.

But when I delve deeper, they share their real emotions, which are full of pain, heartache and fear.

You see, in the Pacific our people are strong. We are resilient, but even we have our limits. And we have reached our limit.

Nowadays, when I wake up in the morning and look out to sea, I see two clouds. Two dark and looming clouds. One is climate change. This cloud brings rising sea levels, more frequent cyclones and king tides like we have never seen before.

It is joined by another cloud. This one is debt. Increasingly frequent and severe weather means that Pacific Island nations are struggling to rebuild. We feel like we are going backwards.

Vital infrastructure such as homes, bridges, farms and fisheries, take years to rebuild while crops and livestock take a similar period to restore. It is extremely expensive, and it is money we simply don't have.

Last year at the United Nations climate talks, nations agreed on a Loss and Damage fund; a fund created to compensate developing countries impacted by climate change, like my home of Tonga in the Pacific Island nations.

We don't contribute much to climate change. In fact, we contribute less than 0.5 per cent of all global emissions. But we certainly pay for it in our futures, and the futures of our children. We need compensation for this injustice.

The Loss and Damage fund is an important step towards climate justice, but we can't forget that the 2009 pledge to spend $100 billion a year in climate aid has still not been met. In fact, the pledge to spend $100 billion a year is far from achieved.

Right now, the Pacific region needs nearly US $1 billion per year in financing to adapt our infrastructure to climate change. We receive much less than this. Continue reading

• Cardinal Soane Patita Paini Mafi is Bishop of Tonga

"We want those big nations to really see and to really hear," the Tongan-based prelate said in an interview with The Tablet.

"Not to pretend. Not to turn away. We want them not to be deafened to the cry of reality by other agendas. Can they turn an ear of love, not of political expediency? Are they prepared to hear the voice of the voiceless?"

The Cop26 climate conference is regarded by many as the last chance to avoid the worst that climate change presents.

For the senior Catholic church leader in the Pacific, it is vital that the peoples of the Pacific are not overlooked in Glasgow.

The islands are among the most vulnerable in the world, and Cardinal Mafi has emerged as one of their most eloquent advocates.

Mafi was consecrated just three months before the publication of Pope Francis' encyclical, Laudato Si. The document calls for a widespread rebirth of spirituality and social and environmental awareness to combat climate change and redress the horrendous imbalance of power and wealth in society.

The cardinal is a member of the executive of Caritas Internationalis and the president of Caritas Oceania. The group has seven member organisations: Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga.

Across the Pacific Mafi sees climate change-induced problems in many Island states. These include deforestation in the Solomon Islands, people in Kiribati losing their homes, villages in Fiji forced to relocate owing to rising sea waters, vanishing foreshores and erosion.

Mafi recently spoke with Vatican Radio's Linda Bordoni about the 2021 Caritas Oceania Annual Forum.

"Environmental protection, care for our common home is always a top priority in Oceania," Cardinal Mafi explained. He pointed out that "one of our main treasures is the ocean". It is the main source of the people's livelihoods as well as our home.

Mafi explained that while the region has different ethnic groups, "we are so rich in that way with our diversity in culture."

But they also have much in common, he added, "A common shared reality: we are all in this vast ocean, the Pacific, and I think the faith element is a strong element of our communality."

He fears losing the traditional communal lifestyle would deprive people of the one resource they had to cope and prosper.

"This is worth more than so-called economic development and foreign-owned infrastructure."

Sources

• Asia Pacific Report
• Vatican News