Amosa was speaking of threats to the region at the United Nations Advocacy Week of the World Council of Churches (WCC) last week.
During the advocacy week, Christians from the Pacific islands appealed for support from the international community as they battle against the odds in the face of climate change, a question of life and death in their communities.
More than 100 representatives from churches and organisations working to care for God's creation came together for the advocacy week.
Amosa stressed that efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change had to be united.
“We have criticised the industrialised nations for failing to take courageous action, but we realise also that the time for according blame has gone.”
Rev Baranite Kirata is from Kiribati, one of three Pacific island states slowly disappearing under rising sea levels and expected to be lost completely to the waves in the foreseeable future.
Rev Kirata knows all too well that the island's people will become refugees but learning to say goodbye to the one place in the world he calls home is no easy task.
“Myself, when I am travelling my heart always longs for home, for where I can cry and rejoice with my people,” Kirata said.
People in Kiribati are already losing their homes and livelihoods to ever increasing and more devastating floods at the same time as fish stocks continue to decrease. Diseases and extreme heat are just two of the associated threats to their health. As an elderly lady on one of the outer islands once told the pastor: “The sun burns as if it was just above my head.”
The rising sea levels are not only forcing people from their homes. The salt water is killing the roots of trees and polluting wells in the areas not yet submerged. At the same time, rainfall, the second source of drinking water for the islanders, is becoming more scarce.
