17 also took the role of the Pilgrim Leader of The Climate Pilgrimage, a journey on foot from Rome to Katowice from October to December 2018. All of these combined to my experience of bearing witness to climate change impacts in the Arctic region, Latin America, North America, Africa, the Pacific Islands, Europe, Australia, and Southeast Asia. People from all walks of life from different faiths, and none, embarked on The People’s Pilgrimage. The Pilgrimage involved a series of walks and journeys from various spiritual bailiwicks within and around Europe, with all roads leading to Paris, the host of the 2015 Climate Change Summit for the United Nations. Likewise, simultaneous solidarity pilgrimages took place in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, Oceania, and the Pacific. The Pilgrimage from Rome to Paris was a central part of The People’s Pilgrimage, heralding once again a special journey for people and communities who care about the future of humanity. From Tacloban City, I started this global pilgrimage, and found myself in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. In March 2015, Tropical Cyclone Pam left great devastation in Vanuatu and other neighboring states in one of the worst disasters that have ever hit these countries. It was in Vanuatu that I met people from Tuvalu, Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga, Solomon Islands, among other Pacific island nations devastated by Cyclone Pam. I was witness to their grief, their desperation, their fear of what the future brings. But I was also witness to their determination, courage, and resolve. They will not go down without a fight. The Pacific Climate Warriors banded together to fight for their islands, for their future, and for humanity. The pilgrimage brought me to the gateway of the Great Barrier Reef on the eastern coast of Australia, where I saw the massive damage that warmer ocean temperatures were inflicting on the world’s largest barrier reef. In the next two years after my visit, scientists had observed massive coral bleaching, and by 2018 they had declared half of the Great Barrier Reef dying because of climate change. 4 I had the privilege of meeting communities in South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam on the impacts of climate change they are starting to experience, as well as on issues that are strongly linked to climate change. Flooding in Thailand has become worse than ever before, and this has direly affected both communities, as well as industry. In South The adverse effects of climate change, which include higher surface temperatures, droughts, floods, more intense storms, and sea level rise, pose a serious risk for Thailand’s communities, in particular their agriculture sector. Bangkok has also seen a rising risk of flooding, and projections put the mega-city at risk of being underwater in 20 years. The Thai people have related their fears of how climate change is damaging their agriculture, and their key economic driver – tourism. All of these will combine to have grave economic and social, as well as cultural and ecological impacts. 4 Hughes, et al. Nature. Volume 556, pages492–496 (2018). Global warming transforms coral reef assemblages.