Aunty McRose Elu has been watching her ancestral lands slowly disappear beneath her feet for decades.
The Saibai elder is extremely concerned rising sea levels and increasingly severe weather events could mean her homeland is uninhabitable within 30 years, leaving her people as the country's first "climate refugees"."These are our cultural lands, this is where we belong." They argue the government has a legal obligation to prevent the loss of their communities to climate change, and they are seeking orders for the cutting of greenhouse gas emissions, among other measures.
She recalls a time when the islands were covered in vegetation and abundant food sources. However, she said the community now relied on cargo ships to stock the local supermarket."The people depend on the cargo ships to bring the goods, fruit and vegetables, meat and so forth.
"[The success of that case] led to the rapid closure of coal-fired power stations and billions of dollars of investments in renewable energy.