This week is an important one – right now leaders of Pacific Islands are meeting in the Marshall Islands for the Pacific Island Leaders Forum. Their biggest focus is on how Pacific Islands are going to face the climate change – Marshall Islands Vice-President Tony de Brum has called on New Zealand and Australia to show leadership on climate change, saying “for us, climate change is already here.”

Often people talk of the Pacific Islands as drowning and helpless victims of climate change. They’re right in one sense – climate change offers a threat to the Islands like none before, and they have done next to naught to cause it. But over the last four years we’ve been mobilizing with young organizers all across the Pacific Islands, and we’re now seeing a very different story emerge.

The new story is of the warrior spirit of the Pacific Islands awaking to fight climate change. Earlier this year, warriors across 14 island nations rose up to launch this new path for the Islands, by performing their traditional warrior performances. They are not drowning. They are fighting. It’s captured in this recently released three minute video summary. It might just send shivers down your spine. Just click on the image or here to watch the video on Youtube.

To coincide with the Pacific Leaders Forum, the 350 Pacific network have launched an ambitious new three year plan to confront the fossil fuel industry. That strategy recognizes that it’s either up to the Fossil Fuel Industry to back down, or the Pacific Islands to back down. So it is only natural that Pacific warriors rise as they have over centuries past to protect their homes, cultures, ecosystems, oceans and islands. They are rising to show that they will not back down. The Fossil Fuel Industry is on warning: backdown now, leave fossil fuels in the ground.

This is unlike any warrior rallying cry ever made to the Pacific Islands. It’s not called for by political leaders, it’s not called for from one island, but it’s called for from the grassroots, or as we like to call it, the coconut roots. In the coming months teams of warriors across 15 Pacific Island nations will enter into training and preparations for the coming confrontation with the Fossil Fuel Industry.

While in the past, warriors of the Pacific have taken up arms in their fierce fights, this fight against the Fossil Fuel Industry is fierce, but fiercely non-violent. They will fight the fossil fuel industry not with clubs and spears, but with a coordinated, focused wave of non-violent direct action, coupled with ongoing local organizing and diligent use of social media.

You can become part of it by sharing their Pacific Warriors story through social media and your networks. The world has to know that Pacific Islanders are ready to face the biggest challenge of 21st century.