Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to find yourself floating on sea water while your home fills up like an aquarium. Before panic sets in, ýour mind desperately tries to find a rational explanation and automatically thinks that you're dreaming. But you're not. This isn't a nightmare, this is a reality that people in the Marshall islands have been waking up to. This archipelago of a thousand or so islands of which many are coralline , has a population of almost 70,000 people who speak their own unique language called Marshallese. Their economy is largely dependent on tuna processing and tourism. The similarities are so terrifyingly close to that of our beloved Seychelles that you can't help but wonder if this is a warning of things to come.  

 Are we next? 

 We cannot deny that the last few years have seen a change in the climate of Seychelles our north west and south east monsoons are no longer working like clockwork, our raining periods are getting wetter, the sun is getting hotter, and our dry periods are undeniably drier. Naively, we think that this is a natural process, let nature run its course, unaware that there is something more urgent looming in the meaning of it all. Climate Change. It's not a fancy word with an empty meaning, or a destination very far in the future. Climate change is happening now. And Seychelles...we are amongst the most vulnerable. It is sometimes easy to forget that we are 99% ocean, with around 60% of our islands being low lying coralline as well as countless homes and other infrastructures located on the coast. When the tides rise, where will we run? Will we be forced to abandon our country, our homes, our culture, move and start over somewhere else? It is not my dream to one day tell my children stories of the fabled Seychelles, to teach them a forgotten language and culture while what is left of our small nation loses touch with one another as our heritage fades away with the years.  

 We cannot simply sit back and watch this happen! As a young person I feel the urgency of this situation, and now more than ever we desperately need to learn the tune of sustainable development and play it as loud as possible. Remind the 7 billion other people in this world of who we are, and that our voices and survival matter too. A better quality of life can no longer be about finding more oil and coal mines to drill, or about how highly our economy ranks in the world. It all means nothing if people, cultures and homes lie scattered on the ocean floor or if thousands if not millions of people become climate change refugees. We are not a helpless nation, unless we choose to be. Without action we will one day end up like the inhabitants of Marshall islands living in fear that this will be the day the ocean comes to claim our lives and the lives of the people we love.