PM thanks young Fijians for speaking the truth to their beliefs at the UN Youth Climate Summit

Your voices and your leadership – as young people – are some of the most powerful forces we wield in demanding action from the rest of the world. 

The struggle for decisive climate action will last for generations, and it is the sake of your future we give our energy to this fight.

That is the message of Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama to the young Fijians at the UN Youth Climate Summit, saying that he sees their passion and he shares their purpose.

Bainimarama also thanked the young Fijians for speaking truth to their beliefs and he says he thanks God that Fiji’s future is in such good hands.

Tens of thousands of grassroots climate action advocates, many of them students, organized a global call to action, the UN Youth Climate Summit amplifying the voices of young activists on the largest of diplomatic stages.

The Summit's standard‑bearer, 16‑year‑old Greta Thunberg of Sweden, was joined by a number of young Fijians.

Those young Fijians were thanked for their activism in‑person by Prime Minister Bainimarama at the Fijian Mission to the United Nations in Midtown Manhattan.

Bainimarama, joined by various ministers and members of the Fijian delegation who are attending this week's Climate Action Summit and, later, the UN General Assembly, gave his heartfelt thanks to the young leaders, saying that they represented the very best of Fiji, and in a time of great uncertainty, shone bright as a beacon of hope for the future of both the nation and the planet.

Fiji's young climate champions in New York include Timoci Naulusala, who rose to prominence as a leading voice in combatting the climate crisis during Fiji's presidency of COP23.

Naulusala was joined by: Tyler Rae Chung, a student in marine studies at USP; Komal Karishma Kumar, who represented the youth‑led Alliance for Future Generations ‑ Fiji; Ann Mary Raduva, an environmentalist and legal activist who attends Adi Cakobau School; Maanvick Gounder, a volunteer at Project Survival Pacific who attends Penanag Sangam High School; and Genevieve Jiva, coordinator at the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network.

The Prime Minister, in his opening intervention at the UN Secretary General's Climate Action Summit, gave Fiji's full commitment to "unite behind the science" of climate change, a call demanded from global leaders by the world's youth. He vowed to carry their momentum and continue his fight for all young people in Fiji.

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