Selina beats climate action drum

Selina Leem, standing third from right, joined a ceremony recognizing climate diplomat Christiana Figueres, kneeling third from left, at Edinburgh Castle during the Peace Boat’s Europe tour. Photo: Ashwa Faheem.
Selina Leem, standing third from right, joined a ceremony recognizing climate diplomat Christiana Figueres, kneeling third from left, at Edinburgh Castle during the Peace Boat’s Europe tour. Photo: Ashwa Faheem.

Marshall Islander Selina Leem is on the Peace Boat for a tour of Europe cities, where she’s raising the profile of the Pacific on climate change half way around the world.

Selina joined with global climate leader Christiana Figueres at several events. Selina first met Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat who was executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 2010-2016, when Selina joined with then-Foreign Minister Tony deBrum and the RMI delegation to the Climate Summit in Paris in late 2015.

That meeting produced the “Paris Climate Agreement,” an important agreement supported by most nations of the world to address climate problems. In the past few days, Figueres was recognized for her work at a ceremony at Edinburgh Castle. Selina and other young people from the Peace Boat tour joined the ceremony.

As the tour continued, Peace Boat also stopped in Barcelona, Spain. “We talked to students from Barcelona of the issues in our country,” Selina said.

Read more about this in the October 20, 2017 edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.