USP Student Zina Bird fights to have the voice of her people in the Solomon Islands heard

18 November 2022

During vocations to her home province in the Solomon Islands, Zina Bird saw firsthand the changes occurring in the local communities, and this was motivation enough for her to pursue studies in Climate Change.

The 34-year-old is currently a Doctor of Philosophy in Climate Change student at the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) at The University of the South Pacific (USP). She is from the Solomon Islands and is part of the discussion at the 27th Conference of Parties (COP27) in Egypt.

“Urgent climate action will minimize the tide from washing away our heritage, culture, and identity from our future generations and can also save our food source,” said Ms Bird.

Her focus at the COP27 negotiations is around food security and she has stressed that food security is an important aspect for those living in small Pacific Island states. She added that climate change was directly impacting food security in many nations.

“For small islands our voices and number may not seem big, and we continue to give our thoughts and ideas of how we can address climate change and food security,” she added.

“I really want to see what the results will be by the end of this week, because there were outcomes from the last COP meeting that showed some targets in certain areas were not achieved. This was disappointing for smaller nations like ours. I want to see that change during this COP meeting.”

Ms Bird is one of four students funded by the European Union Intra-ACP GCCA+ Pacific Adapta-tion to Climate Change and Resilience Building (PACRES) programme at USP who are attending the 27th Conference of Parties.