Changing Tides
Meet Sivendra Michael, a 32 year old climate activist and single dad from Fiji, who has made it his mission to educate and empower young people around the Pacific to rise up and defend their island homes.
Sivendra grew up on the frontline of climate change. He was barely a year old when the Pacific Island Nations first rallied together in 1991 to ask the UN for help with rising seas and extreme weather. His childhood was marked by floods and cyclones, and he witnessed first-hand the economic and emotional aftermath as his family struggled to keep their small automotive business afloat. His childhood years were a vicious cycle of disaster, recovery, and relocation.
By the time he was a teenager, Sivendra wanted answers. He studied climate change and disaster management at university and was halfway through a Master’s degree in New Zealand when Cyclone Winston hit Fiji in 2016. Fearing for his loved ones, Sivendra rushed home and as he stood in the wreckage of his family home, decided to take matters into his own hands.
That year he created two projects: the Valuing Voices Project, which harnessed social media to raise awareness of the untold climate stories around the Pacific, and the Active Citizen's Project, a leadership program that has trained 10,377 youth across 10 Pacific Island countries to rally their local communities and create their own environmental campaigns.
Driven by his motto – “small changes collectively make a significant impact” –Sivendra has initiated campaigns for alternative energy sources, advocacy programmes, policy change, as well as 4,000 mangrove planting projects.
Three years ago, he paused his advocacy to finish a 'very personal' PhD that filled a gap in climate change research, that often overlooked the Pacific region and its impact on small and medium enterprises. Over this past two weeks, Sivendra has taken his mission to the world stage as a formal negotiator at COP27, to share the stories, struggles and resilience of his island home as they continue their fight for climate justice.
My purpose is to give back to the community that gave me everything. In the Pacific, they say that it takes a community to bring up a child and as their child, I want to be their voice.
