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A traditionally dressed representative from a South Pacific nation installs a flag in a canoe on the shores of a beach before participating in a protest aimed at ships leaving Newcastle coal port, north of Sydney, Australia, Oct. 17, 2014. REUTERS/David Gray

BARCELONA, – As hundreds of protesters joined environmental activists from South Pacific nations trying to blockade ships at the world’s largest coal export terminal in Australia on Friday, Marshall Islands poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner appealed to world leaders “to put an end to the era of fossil fuels once and for all”.

At last month’s U.N. climate summit in New York, she won a standing ovation from leaders for her moving performance of a poem on fighting climate change, written for her baby daughter. Now Jetnil-Kijiner, like a growing number of other activists, is training her sights on coal, oil and gas companies.

“The biggest threat to our homes is the fossil fuel industry and we will not rest until our very existence is no longer threatened by their greed and endless extraction,” the young Pacific islander said in a statement.

As the impacts of climate change – including more extreme weather and rising seas – start to bite around the world, environmental groups and development charities are stepping up efforts to put pressure on what they see as the root cause of planet-warming emissions: fossil fuel businesses and the politicians who support them.

On Friday, aid agency Oxfam blamed what it called a “toxic triangle made up of short-term financial investors, timid governments and fossil fuel companies” for trapping the world on a path of high carbon emissions, and blocking a shift to renewable energy sources.

Such a path could put 400 million people at risk of severe food and water shortages by 2060, the charity warned in a report.

“This is all about big profits for the few with little care for the rest of us – particularly the world’s poorest people who are already being made hungry by climate change,” said Oxfam Executive Director Winnie Byanyima.

Julie-Anne Richards, the group’s head of food and climate policy, said individuals concerned about the issue could urge their governments to stop using taxpayers’ money to subsidise polluting industries and ask questions about what their own investments are financing.

‘COSY RELATIONSHIPS’

Charlie Kronick, a senior campaigner for Greenpeace, noted a recent surge of interest in targeting the shareholders and creditors of fossil fuel companies, as well as their corporate and social partners.