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pacific island nations
Pacific Islands Summit Highlights Disproportionate Climate Impacts
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres stressed that "the region urgently needs substantial finance, capacities, and technology to speed up the transition and to invest in adaptation and resilience."
Aug 26, 2024
As more than 1,500 delegates from over 40 nations gathered in Tonga for the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, climate defenders on Monday urged the world's biggest polluters to do much more to phase out the fossil fuels that are driving a planetary emergency disproportionately affecting low-lying island countries, which are among the world's lowest greenhouse gas emitters.
"Tonga's vision for the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting (PIFLM53) is for the Pacific to move beyond policy deliberation to implementation—to achieve transformation by building better now," summit organizers said in a statement affirming the event's mission to "develop collective responses to regional issues and deliver on their vision for a resilient Pacific region of peace, harmony, security, social inclusion, and prosperity."
"We may be small island countries but we are a force to be reckoned with."
Addressing attendees at the summit's opening ceremony in the Tongan capital of Nuku'alofa, Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Secretary-General Baron Waqa of Nauru called for regional unity to tackle common challenges.
"We may be small island countries but we are a force to be reckoned with," he said. "We are at the center of geostrategic interest, we are at the forefront of a battle against climate change and its impacts."
Speaking at Monday's opening session, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres lamented that "humanity is treating the sea like a sewer. Plastic pollution is choking sea life. Greenhouse gases are causing ocean heating, acidification, and a dramatic and accelerating rise in sea levels."
Guterres—who warned in Samoa last week that low-lying island nations face the threat of climate "annihilation"—said that "Pacific islands are showing the way to protect our climate, our planet, and our ocean: By declaring a climate emergency and pushing for action, and with your declarations on sea-level rise, and aspirations for a just transition to a fossil fuel-free Pacific. But, the region urgently needs substantial finance, capacities, and technology to speed up the transition and to invest in adaptation and resilience."
"The young people of the Pacific have taken the climate crisis all the way to the International Court of Justice," Guterres added. "You have also rightly recognized that this is a security crisis—and taken steps to manage those risks together."
Mahoney Mori, who chairs the Pacific Youth Council and is the PIFLM53 youth representative from the Federated States of Micronesia, called out the international community's failure to adequately fund climate mitigation initiatives like the loss and damage fund—which developing nations say will require an annual investment of at least $400 billion, or nearly 10 times the amount pledged at last year's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai.
"Despite the commendable pledges from the United Nations and world leaders such as the Paris agreement, the existing global finance mechanisms still hindered community-based and youth organizations from accessing critical support," Mori said. "The Pacific's grassroots organizations struggle to meet global standards amidst this crisis and time is running out."
As leaders met for PIFLM53 amid torrential rains, a 6.9-magnitude earthquake rocked Tonga's main island of Tongatapu. While there was no damage reported and no tsunami warning issued, summit attendees said the temblor underscored vulnerabilities faced by low-lying island nations.
Leaders and activists from Pacific island nations took aim at regional giant Australia—which has been perennially ranked as one of the world's worst climate-wreckers in U.N.-backed Sustainable Development reports—for insufficient climate action.
"We recognize Australia's desire to present itself as a climate leader and co-host the COP alongside the Pacific," Pacific Islands Climate Action Network regional director Rufino Varea said in a statement, referring to Australia's bid to help lead the 2026 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP31.
"However, true leadership must not merely be aspirational; it must be actionable," Varea continued. "To date, Australia has expanded gas production instead of aligning its practices with the urgent needs of the Pacific. This does not reflect the leadership we need."
"If Australia is to demonstrate genuine commitment, it must align its domestic and international climate policies with our goals and advocate earnestly for a fossil fuel-free Pacific," he stressed. "It must also commit to ambitious climate actions, ensure effective climate finance is delivered to Pacific island countries, and contribute substantially to the loss and damage fund."
"If these steps are not taken, we risk witnessing a COP that concedes failure—declaring that critical targets were missed, and that Pacific communities continue to be exploited as mere labor resources for the enrichment of others," Varea added.
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While Top Polluters Dither, Pacific Island Nations Lead Push for Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty
"The longer we remain addicted to fossil fuels, the longer we commit ourselves to mutual decline," Tuvaluan Prime Minister Kausea Natano said at the U.N. Climate Ambition Summit.
Sep 20, 2023
As heads of climate-wrecking nations like the United States, China, and Britain declined to attend Wednesday's United Nations Climate Ambition Summit in New York, leaders of Pacific island and other Global South countries renewed the push for a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty.
The government of Tuvalu is working with neighbors Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, the Solomon Islands, and the self-governing New Zealand territory of Niue—all signatories to the Port Vila Call, a framework to a just transition to a fossil-free Pacific—and global partners to draft a FFNPT.
"The longer we remain addicted to fossil fuels, the longer we commit ourselves to mutual decline," Tuvaluan Prime Minister Kausea Natano said at the summit. "A negotiated fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty would complement the Paris agreement and ensure a global just transition.
"We've proven we can mobilize our collective ambition at the multilateral level. The scale of the challenge we face can now only be met with an even greater level of ambition and cooperation," he added. "I traveled thousands of miles over four days to be here today, because I believe in international cooperation and multilateralism. I have faith in our collective humanity and our ability to foster global solidarity to undertake what needs to be done."
Launched in 2020 and backed by hundreds of groups, thousands of scientists, and people around the world from youth to grandparents, the FFNPT is based on three pillars:
- Ending expansion of new coal, oil, or gas production in line with the best available science;
- Phasing out the production of fossil fuels in a manner that is fair and equitable; and
- Ensuring a global just transition to 100% access to renewable energy globally.
In addition to the aforementioned nations, the country of East Timor, the European Parliament, and the World Health Organization have called for a FFNPT. Scores of cities and other subnational governments have also endorsed the FFNPT, including London, Paris, Los Angeles, Sydney, Toronto, and the Hawaiian Legislature.
Earlier this month, California became the largest economy in the world to endorse the treaty.
"This climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis," Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said at Wednesday's summit. "It's not complicated. It's the burning of oil. It's the burning of gas. It's the burning of coal. And we need to call that out. For decades and decades, the fossil fuel industry has been playing each and every one of us in this room for fools."
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, another supporter of the treaty, said during Wednesday's summit that "the real goal that all countries should have is aiming for zero production and supply of carbon gas and oil. If we don't aim for that as our overarching goal, life will not be saved."
"If we keep on our current track it will be suicide," he added. "We live on coal and gas exports, but if we don't change course it will mean death because those industries are polluting the atmosphere. Fossil capital is a burden for humankind. Fossil fuel subsidies need to be completely eliminated worldwide. That would give us a prospect for the future."
Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative, said at a press conference Wednesday that "today was a turning point... A growing block of countries is calling for a FFNPT that would ensure an end to expansion of oil, gas, and coal projects, and cooperation on a plan for a managed wind-down that is fast, fair, and financed."
The climate action group Oil Change International blasted what it called wealthy nations' "display of inaction and indifference."
"The handful of rich countries driving oil and gas expansion failed to answer United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres' call for an end to new fossil fuel production," the group noted. "These countries, with the greatest financial means and responsibility to lead a fast and fair global phaseout of production, are instead leading in jeopardizing the global 1.5°C goal."
"Five Global North countries—the United States, Canada, Australia, Norway, and the United Kingdom—are responsible for 51% of carbon dioxide pollution threatened by new oil and gas extraction between 2023 and 2050," Oil Change continued. "If these planet-wreckers were to heed the United Nations secretary-general's call to halt new oil and gas, we could prevent a staggering 100 billion tons of carbon pollution from entering our atmosphere, equivalent to the lifetime emissions of over 620 new coal plants."
"In contrast, countries like Chile, Denmark, France, and Tuvalu were invited to speak at the summit," the group added, "as they have halted fossil fuel expansion and financing as needed to align with 1.5°C."
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