In this episode of 5Talks, Fenton Lutunatabua, one of the founders of the Pacific Climate Warriors, talks about how the past informs the future through ancestral wisdom.
“There’s a concept in Fijian culture, where we walk backwards into the future,” says Fiji climate activist Fenton Lutunatabua. “It’s an acknowledgement of our elders and our ancestors and all of the wisdom that they hold and we inherit”.
For him, it’s also a call to stewardship, respect for the natural world and a recognition of value and worth of things that can’t be measured in economic terms.
It’s one of the reasons why he co-founded the Pacific Climate Warriors, an organization which has grown into a powerful network spanning 17 Pacific Island countries fighting for climate justice and operating as the regional chapter of influential international climate movement 350.org.
He shares his story here.
We spoke to Fenton Lutunatabua at environmental think tank Futerra’s Solutions House, a space for optimism and action, at Climate Week 2025.
