We are clear, bold, and grounded in the Pacific 17 Urgent Demands.

Find them here: https://divafiji.org/join-us-and-support-the-pacific-feminist-defending-the-living-planet-campaign/

The 17 Urgent Demands by Pacific feminists defending the living planet are important and progressive community-led, women-led positions circulating in local, national, regional, and global spaces. They carry the weight of generations of knowledge from our ancestors and elders, who have defended our lands, our oceans, and the living species we are interconnected with and interdependent on. That knowledge is grounded in ecological balance, liberation, and justice in all territories, including our bodies.

The Demands were shaped in Nadi, Fiji, in April 2025, by Pacific grassroots activists, feminists, young people, people with disabilities, faith-based organisations, Pacific scientists, funders, and elders.

The Demands are not a wish list but a clear, firm, and collective instruction from the Pacific to the world.

From Nadi to Pre-COP31: Turning Words into Delivery

At Pre-COP31, the Pacific showed what it looks like to move from demand to delivery. We successfully hosted “Nationalising the Belém GAP,” a session that brought together Pacific government leaders, academics from the Australian National University, the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC), Pacific young women representatives, and the Women and Gender Constituency through WEDO.

The message from the room was CLEAR: climate justice cannot be achieved without gender justice, and it builds on the Pacific Pact on Gender and Climate Action, an outcome of the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Palau this year, in which Pacific heads of state recognised the inseparable link between climate action and gender equality. It also recognises the work of the Pacific as a region in nationalising the Belém Gender Action Plan (GAP).

Why “Nationalising” Matters

The Belém GAP is only as strong as its implementation. Without national ownership, budgets, accountable institutions, and the leadership of those most affected, it risks becoming another beautifully worded text that never reaches the communities who need it most. A global agreement only matters when it changes lives in villages, settlements, atolls, and cities.

For Pacific Island countries, nationalising the Belém GAP means:

• Embedding gender-responsive climate action in national climate policies, NDCs, and adaptation plans
• Ensuring climate finance reaches women, young people, people with disabilities, and frontline communities directly, not only through intermediaries
• Guaranteeing meaningful participation of grassroots women and diverse groups in climate decision-making, from the village to the negotiating table
• Building accountability through data, monitoring and public reporting
• Honouring Indigenous and traditional knowledge as science, as governance and as law

We Are Living in a Time of Ecocide

Rising seas swallow burial grounds. Cyclones return before communities can rebuild. Reefs bleach, fisheries shift, and lands salinate. Women, girls and gender-diverse people carry the heaviest burdens of care, displacement and violence in every disaster, and they are too often left out of the rooms where decisions are made. The Pacific contributed least to this crisis and is paying the highest price. We refuse to be polite about it.

Listen to the “Right to science” and the reality in small island states.

The Road to COP31 in Türkiye

The momentum from Pre-COP31 in Fiji and Tuvalu, now travels to COP31 in Türkiye, where there will be a dedicated side event, a COP31 Pacific Day on 17 November (JOIN!) and work online and in Antalya. Interest and leadership in implementing the Belém GAP 2026-2034 is growing across countries, regions and constituencies. The Pacific intends to be at the front of that movement, with our Pacific Pact on Gender and Climate Action, Pacific women’s 17 Urgent Demands and our plans.

To governments, funders, regional bodies and partners, our call is simple:

1. Implement. Move the Belém GAP and Pacific Pact on Gender and Climate Action from paper to national practice with political will, data, analysis, timelines, budgets and accountability.
2. Fund. Direct gender-transformative climate finance to feminist, grassroots and community-led organisations with consistent, accessible, flexible and long-term support. Nationalise the work.
3. Include. Make intersectional participation the standard, not the exception. Everyone matters.
4. Listen. Treat the Pacific 17 Urgent Demands as a guide. Discuss and deepen them over time.
5. Make the change. It does not matter what you say, but what you do.

Bold, Strong, Clear and Firm

We are bold because the stakes are our survival.

We are strong because we stand on the shoulders of ancestors and elders who never surrendered our oceans, lands, other species, and the living PLANET.

We are clear because our demands are written, shared, and owned by our people.

We are firm because justice delayed is justice denied, especially for those who have waited the longest.

We are loving because this is a long, arduous struggle, and we must be together in this work.

The time to implement the Belém Gender Action Plan 2026-2034 and the Pacific Pact on Gender and Climate Action is now. Join the Pacific. Join the change.