Pacific Island nations are facing a same-sex and heterosexual HIV/AIDS epidemic which may be more urgent and destructive that global warming. Fiji, Samoa, and the Cook Islands are among those nations with close ties to New Zealand which are witnessing an alarming increase in the numbers of people with HIV infection. Perhaps more disturbing is Tonga where there is a complete absence of official information on the number of people infected with HIV, or who have progressed to AIDS. "For Tuvalu," says Maire Bopp Dupont, a Pacific Islands HIV activist, the epidemic "could be quicker to harm than the sea level rise." An investigation by Scoop news website points to religion-driven discrimination against glbt people as a significant factor driving the growing epidemic. "Amongst many Pacific Churches there is a dominant right wing theology of discrimination and oppression against gays, lesbians, and HIV/AIDS," Reverend Mua Strickson Pua of the Pacific Island Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa told Scoop. Strickson Pua is a Greens candidate for this year's general election. Island churches and patriarchal cultural attitudes are forcing Pacific Island men who have sex with men into the shadows, thereby making education, testing and treatment almost impossible. "The issue of men having sex with men is well under reported and understood because of cultural and religious factors," says Stuart Watson, a spokesperson for The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS The NZ AIDS Foundation is chairing a major Pacific Islands-focussed HIV conference in late October this year to review and plan responses to HIV and AIDS in our region.