OPINION | Inter Press Service (IPS) |28 October 2026

From small islands to Antalya: COP31 must move climate promises from paper to people

When you grow up on a small island, the ocean is not scenery. It is your neighbour, your livelihood, and the measure of time itself. For decades, as I walked the beaches of Seychelles, I watched the subtle shifts that scientists were warning the world about. The tide crept a little higher up the sand each year. After a warm season, vibrant coral gardens turned ghost-white. Storms that once belonged to rare memory began arriving with unsettling regularity.

For a long time, when leaders from small island developing states spoke of these things in great conference halls, we were listened to with polite sympathy. Our plight was treated as tragic, yes, but distant – a problem for small dots on the map, far from the capitals of global power.

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