I travelled for days to get from Tanzania to Fiji for the Pacific Pre-COP31. The distance itself taught me something.

The cost of travel, the number of connections, the time zones, and the sheer amount of time it takes to get here are among the reasons we do not see more advocates from this region in global climate spaces. Being here made me appreciate even more deeply the Pacific feminists, activists and community leaders who continue to show up despite these barriers. Those who take the impossible flights, pay the highest travel costs, stay awake at impossible hours to join global meetings, and navigate processes designed far from their homes. I salute them.

And I also want to recognize those who cannot be in the room. Those whose participation comes through the work they continue to do at home, through organizing their communities, defending their lands and waters, caring for one another, and building solutions whether or not the global climate process sees them. I travelled to Fiji to show up for them, for us, and for humanity.

When your life really does depend on it

We often use the phrase, “fight like your life depends on it.” In the Pacific, those words take on a different meaning.

Feminists, young people, Indigenous Peoples, communities and governments across this region are fighting the climate crisis like their lives depend on it because they do.

Before coming to Fiji, WEDO wrote about why holding this year’s Pre-COP in the Pacific mattered. The Pacific has been central to some of the most consequential developments in global climate politics, from the fight to keep 1.5°C alive to the campaign that ultimately led to the International Court of Justice’s historic Advisory Opinion on States’ obligations in relation to climate change.

That leadership was visible everywhere during the four days of the Pre-COP, through the Stakeholder Forum, the Leaders’ events and the Ministerial discussions. But being in the Pacific also made visible something that is harder to understand from inside a negotiating room.

Climate change here is not an abstract debate about targets, paragraphs or negotiating positions. It is about whether communities can remain on their land. It is about food and water, livelihoods and culture, sovereignty and survival.

I was disappointed that civil society was not part of the Leaders’ Session in Tuvalu. Those voices should have been there. But even from Fiji, we could feel the strength and spirit of the communities and movements whose lives and leadership shaped the conversations taking place. That distinction matters. The Pacific should not simply be the backdrop against which global leaders witness the climate crisis. Pacific peoples must shape the decisions that follow.

These are Big Ocean States

One of the most powerful lessons for me was understanding more deeply what the ocean means to Pacific peoples. The ocean is not simply a blue space on a map separating islands from one another.

It is life. It is livelihood. It is identity. It carries history and culture. It sustains the present and shapes the future.

One speaker challenged us to stop thinking only in terms of “Small Island Developing States” and instead to see Big Ocean States. That shift in language stayed with me.

Because it changes what we see. It moves us away from a story in which Pacific countries are defined primarily by their size or vulnerability, toward one that recognizes their stewardship, political leadership, knowledge and immense relationship with the ocean. And that leadership has concrete implications for COP31.

The Taku Pakasoa Declaration, agreed during the Pre-COP Leaders’ event, carries many of these priorities forward. It calls for urgent action to keep 1.5°C within reach, deeper and faster emissions reductions, better access to climate finance, stronger resilience, protection of sovereignty in the face of sea-level rise, and greater recognition of the ocean-climate nexus. The Declaration also explicitly recognizes the leadership of Pacific countries in advancing international legal action on climate change.

These are not peripheral issues for COP31. They are at the heart of whether the international climate regime is capable of responding to the realities people are already living.

From promises to implementation

For WEDO and the Women and Gender Constituency, the Pre-COP was also an important space to connect these larger political questions to the work of implementing the Belém Gender Action Plan.

Pacific feminists arrived with a clear agenda. The 17 Urgent Demands of Pacific Feminists Defending the Living Planet connect gender justice with climate finance, adaptation and loss and damage, Indigenous knowledge, food sovereignty, oceans, fossil fuel dependency and economic justice. They remind us that gender equality cannot be added onto climate policy after the important decisions have already been made.

The Pacific Pact on Gender and Climate Action similarly offers an important example of what it can mean to take a global agreement like the Belém GAP and ask what implementation looks like regionally and nationally: who participates in decision-making, whose evidence and knowledge count, and where climate finance actually flows. These questions followed me throughout my time in Fiji.

Before Pre-COP, WEDO asked whether bringing global decision-makers closer to the realities of the Pacific would actually translate into political action. That remains the question. Leaders came here. They listened. They witnessed. They made commitments. They promised that Pacific priorities would be carried forward to COP31 in Antalya. Now they have to deliver.

I will be in Antalya too, standing alongside feminists and movements from the Pacific and around the world, not simply to hear those promises repeated, but to help hold governments accountable for turning them into action.

Showing up matters. But what we do after we show up matters even more.