Solomon Yeo is a climate campaigner from the Solomon Islands. He graduated with a Bachelor of Law and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics in 2019 from the University of the South Pacific. In the same year, together with his classmates, they launched a campaign to persuade Pacific leaders to advance a UN general assembly resolution seeking an advisory opinion on climate change and human rights from the International Court of Justice. The students then founded together the organization known as the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change that serves as the vehicle to drive the campaign forward where Solomon is now working as the campaign director of organization.
Central to his motivation is his passion to help vulnerable groups and communities receive the adequate information attention and support. He has been working alongside local and regional climate action networks and partners, to mainstream the intersectionality between human rights and climate change to influence policies and public opinion.
Majority of his time is spent working with youth. He believes that youth can and must play a crucial role in leading the climate justice charge at all levels of decision making. Understanding that there exist numerous barriers to youth specifically on capacity building and access, Solomon is working to eliminate as much barriers possible. He mentors, advices, train and enable youth access to tools, resources and platforms, to foster the growth of young change makers.
He is an avid promoter of environmental education towards youth and has been working on numerous activities such as environmental awareness, tree planting, waste management and art-ivism. He is also a part-time tutor at USP assisting International Environmental Law students. To his belief, maintaining youth environmental education is crucial in the preservation of Pacific environment, traditions and cultures – all are vulnerable and threatened.
Looking forward, Solomon envisions two things. First, is that there needs to be greater leadership on climate and environmental action and one of the key ingredients to its success is the meaningful involvement of more young people into the spaces of decision making. The responsibility to make this a reality lies not in governments but all stakeholders. Second, environmental education must be streamlined into all facets of education and program to help shape the present generation to be better custodians and trustees of their environment for the future generations.
