Māori and Pasifika leaders are leading climate adaptation, guided by ancestral knowledge and Indigenous principles to build resilience and shape global solutions.

Last week, they played a key role in launching a new Indigenous climate adaptation network at a wānanga ahead of Adaptation Futures 2025, held on October 13-16 in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

The network aims to build a global movement grounded in Indigenous knowledge, centred on decolonising systems and financial mechanisms, and ensuring Indigenous peoples have direct access to climate finance, the funding that supports actions to address and adapt to climate change.

The wānanga was led by Lisa Tumahai (Ngāi Tahu), New Zealand patron for Adaptation Futures 2025 and deputy chair of the NZ Climate Commission, and Tagaloa Cooper (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi, Niue), director of the Climate Change Resilience Programme at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) in Apia, Samoa.

“The Indigenous Forum came from what we learnt at the previous two adaptation conferences. The recommendations from Indigenous peoples were to step it up a bit at this conference and create an intentional day and space for Indigenous voices,” says Tumahai.

“For the first time, people are really seeing the commonalities we share with other Indigenous populations, whether they’re from Canada, Africa, or the Amazon.”

Kotahitanga across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa
Cooper said many of the Pasifika in attendance felt “at home” in Aotearoa and welcomed the opportunity to have a major conference hosted in the region, as international events are often inaccessible due to high costs.

“I’d like to have more of these types of conversations with our cousins in New Zealand where we can exchange knowledge, learn from each other, and also be innovative about how we do adapt,” she says.

She added that, in speaking with Pacific participants, there was a strong call for deeper engagement with iwi across Aotearoa, particularly in rural communities facing similar challenges to small island nations, to create more opportunities for sharing and exchanging traditional knowledge.

The value of Indigenous knowledge
Cooper emphasised that Indigenous peoples hold a vast body of knowledge that has long been marginalised.

“Science now is telling us what we’ve always known as Indigenous people,” Cooper says.

“We must remember our ancestors navigated the vast oceans to get here and then grew nations in very difficult places. There is a lot to learn from our people because we have adapted to live in new lands and we’re still here.”

As Indigenous observer for the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds, lawyer Taumata Toki (Ngāti Rehua) says this is a growing area that deserves attention, given the value Indigenous peoples bring and how their knowledge can strengthen climate adaptation projects.

He says he is continually inspired by Indigenous leaders around the world who are not only experts in Western knowledge systems but also grounded in Indigenous principles that are transforming how climate change is addressed.

Toki says the guiding aim of tikanga is balance, a core concept that aligns with many other Indigenous worldviews and shapes how they approach climate change and sustainability.

Barriers to climate finance
Indigenous peoples globally have often had limited access to UN climate change negotiation spaces.

Tumahai said barriers include accreditation requirements or registered body status to access climate finance.

Cooper added that smaller nations and small administrations often lack the capacity, time, and personnel to develop complex project proposals, causing delays and frustration in the flow of funds.

When asked whether Māori face additional barriers to accessing climate adaptation funding as Indigenous peoples within a developed nation, Toki says that, on a global scale, Māori are at the forefront of sovereignty over what development looks like.

However, he acknowledges that when this is set against the wider context of what is happening in Aotearoa, “it doesn’t look the best,” pointing to the ongoing challenges Māori face at home despite their strong global standing.

Māori-led adaptation and succession planning
“When it comes to Māori-led adaptation, it needs to start in our court,” he says. “We need to have our own really thought-out discussion in terms of how we develop these projects to be both tikanga-aligned, but also wider Indigenous peoples’ principles aligned.”

Once internal cohesion across iwi is established, state support will play an important role.

Despite the challenges, Toki says the potential ahead is immense, both economically and environmentally, and Aotearoa has the opportunity to be world-leading in this space.

Tumahai agrees that the work has to start at home, and her passion, which she has long championed, is succession planning to bring rangatahi into the work.

“And with that succession planning, it’s not to be dismissive of the pakeke or kaumatua who are really that korowai and the knowledge holders,” she says.

“We have our own systems that ensure the conversations are held and led where the knowledge is sitting.”

Te Aniwaniwa is a digital producer for Te Ao Māori News and contributes to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by Te Ao Māori News and is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific leaders believe climate experts are missing an opportunity to incorporate indigenous knowledge into adaptation measures.

The call has been made as hundreds of scientists, global leaders, and climate adaptation experts around the globe gather at the Adaptation Futures Conference in Christchurch.

At the conference’s opening session, Tuvalu’s Environment Minister Maina Talia explained how sea level rise was damaging agricultural land and fresh groundwater is becoming saline.

“The figures are alarming, this is not just for Tuvalu and this is not a Tuvaluan problem, it’s not even a small island developing states problem, it’s a global economic bomb,” he said.

Incorporating indigenous knowledge into climate adaptation has been a major focus of the event.

Talia told RNZ Pacific he feels adaptation is generally presented in a Western lens.

“We need to decolonise our mind, decolonise our soul, in order to integrate community-based adaptation measures.”

Flagship adaptation projects
The highest elevation in Tuvalu is only four and a half metres. A 2023 report from NASA found much of Tuvalu’s land would be below the average high tide by 2050.

To combat rising seas the government has started reclaiming land, which is one of the island nation’s flagship adaptation projects.

Talia said a “decolonisation approach” gave communities ownership of the work being done.

“It’s all informed by our elders, informed by our youth, informed by our women in society, we cannot come with the idea that this is how your adaptation measures should look like.”

Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) director-general Sefanaia Nawadra, on a similar line, said the “biggest difference” of incorporating indigenous-led solutions was giving people a sense of ownership.

“It’s management by compliance rather than management by regulation, where you’re using a stick to say, ‘ok, if you don’t do this, you will be penalised’.”

‘Like a cheat code’
Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change president Cynthia Houniuhi said those on the front line of the adverse effects of climate change are often indigenous people, which is almost always the case in the Pacific.

“Who knows the place better than the ones that have lived there, so imagine that experience informs the solution, that’s the best way, it’s kind of like a cheat code.”

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) head of adaptation Youssef Nassef said it is not always clear how national adaptation plans included input from indigenous people.

He also said climate knowledge is not always accessible to those who need it most.

“We create knowledge, we put them in peer-reviewed publications but are the people who are actually needing it on the frontlines of climate change impacts really receiving that knowledge.”

Pacific climate activists are coming off a high after a top UN court found failing to protect people from the adverse effects of climate change could violate international law.

ICJ advisory opinion
Houniuhi was one of the students who got the advisory opinion in July from the International Court of Justice.

But she told those attending the conference it meant nothing if not acted upon.

“We must continue this same energy, momentum and drive into the implementation of the ruling. As one of our mentors rightly said, ‘the law has now caught up to the science, what we now need is for policy to catch up to the law’.”

Houniuhi said the advisory opinion provided “more weight to influence demands”. She expected the advisory opinion to be used as a negotiating tool by Pacific leaders at COP30 in Brazil next month.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Vanuatu’s top lawyer has called out the United States for “bad behavior” after newly inaugurated President Donald Trump withdrew the world’s biggest historic emitter of greenhouse gasses from the Paris Agreement for a second time.

The Pacific nation’s Attorney-General Arnold Loughman, who led Vanuatu’s landmark International Court of Justice climate case at The Hague last month, said the withdrawal represented an “undeniable setback” for international action on global warming.

“The Paris Agreement remains key to the world’s efforts to combat climate change and respond to its effects, and the participation of major economies like the US is crucial,” he told BenarNews in a statement.

The withdrawal could also set a “troubling precedent” regarding the accountability of rich nations that are disproportionately responsible for global warming, said Loughman.

“At the same time, the US’ bad behavior could inspire resolve on behalf of developed countries to act more responsibly to try and safeguard the international rule of law,” he said.

“Ultimately, the whole world stands to lose if the international legal framework is allowed to erode.”

Trump’s announcement on Monday came less than two weeks after scientists confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first in which average temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Agreed to ‘pursue efforts’
Under the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015, leaders agreed to “pursue efforts” to limit warming under the 1.5°C threshold or, failing that, keep rises “well below” 2°C  by the end of the century.

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said on Wednesday in a brief comment that Trump’s action would “force us to rethink our position” but the US president must do “what is in the best interest of the United States of America”.

Other Pacific leaders and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) regional intergovernmental body have not responded to BenarNews requests for comment.

The forum — comprising 18 Pacific states and territories — in its 2018 Boe Declaration said: “Climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific and [we reaffirm] our commitment to progress the implementation of the Paris Agreement.”

Trump’s executive order sparked dismay and criticism in the Pacific, where the impacts of a warming planet are already being felt in the form of more intense storms and rising seas.

Jacynta Fa’amau, regional Pacific campaigner with environmental group 350 Pacific, said the withdrawal would be a diplomatic setback for the US.

“The climate crisis has for a long time now been our greatest security threat, especially to the Pacific,” she told BenarNews.

A clear signal
“This withdrawal from the agreement is a clear signal about how much the US values the survival of Pacific nations and all communities on the front lines.”

New Zealand’s former Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio, said that if the US withdrew from its traditional leadership roles in multilateral organisations China would fill the gap.

“Some people may not like how China plays its role,” wrote the former Labour MP on Facebook. “But when the great USA withdraws from these global organisations . . . it just means China can now go about providing global leadership.”

Analysts and former White House advisers told BenarNews last year that climate change could be a potential “flashpoint” between Pacific nations and a second Trump administration at a time of heightened geopolitical competition with China.

Trump’s announcement was not unexpected. During his first term he withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, only for former President Joe Biden to promptly rejoin in 2021.

The latest withdrawal puts the US, the world’s largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, alongside only Iran, Libya and Yemen outside the climate pact.

In his executive order, Trump said the US would immediately begin withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and from any other commitments made under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

US also ending climate finance
The US would also end its international climate finance programme to developing countries — a blow to small Pacific island states that already struggle to obtain funding for resilience and mitigation.

A fact sheet published by the Biden administration on November 17, which has now been removed from the White House website, said that US international climate finance reached more than US$11 billion in 2024.

Loughman said the cessation of climate finance payments was particularly concerning for the Pacific region.

“These funds are essential for building resilience and supporting adaptation strategies,” he said. “Losing this support could severely hinder ongoing and future projects aimed at protecting our vulnerable ecosystems and communities.”

George Carter, deputy head of the Department of Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University and member of the COP29 Scientific Council, said at the centre of the Biden administration’s re-engagement with the South Pacific was a regional programme on climate adaptation.

“While the majority of climate finance that flows through the Pacific comes from Australia, Japan, European Union, New Zealand — then the United States — the climate networks and knowledge production from the US to the Pacific are substantial,” he said.

Climate actions plans
Pacific island states, like all other signatories to the Paris Agreement, will this year be submitting Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, outlining their climate action plans for the next five years.

“All climate actions, policies and activities are conditional on international climate finance,” Carter said.

Pacific island nations are being disproportionately affected by climate change despite contributing just 0.02 percent of global emissions, according to a UN report released last year.

Low-lying islands are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme weather events like cyclones, floods and marine heatwaves, which are projected to occur more frequently this century as a result of higher average global temperatures.

On January 10, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed that last year for the first time the global mean temperature tipped over 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average.

WMO experts emphasised that a single year of more than 1.5°C does not mean that the world has failed to meet long-term temperature goals, which are measured over decades, but added that “leaders must act — now” to avert negative impacts.

Harry Pearl is a BenarNews journalist. This article was first published by BenarNews and is republished at Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Biman Prasad has told an international conference in Bangkok that some of the most severely debt-stressed countries are the island states of the Pacific.

Dr Prasad, who is also a former economic professor, said the harshest impacts of global economic re-engineering are being felt by the poorest communities across this region.

He told the conference last month that the adaptation challenges arising from runaway climate change were the steepest across the atoll states of the Pacific — Kiribati, Tuvalu and Marshall Islands.

Dr Prasad said at no time, outside of war, had economies had to face a 30 to 70 percent contraction as a consequence of a single cyclone, but Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga had faced such a situation within this decade.

He said the world must secure the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“There is no Plan B. The two options before the world are to either secure the goals, or face extreme chaos,” he said.

“There is nothing in the middle. Not this time.”

Extreme chaos risk
Prasad said there will be extreme chaos if the world went ahead and used the same international financial architecture it had had in place for years.

“And if we continue with the same complex processes to actually access any grant funding which is now available, then we cannot address the issue of this financing gap, as well as climate finance — both for mitigation and adaptation that is badly needed by small vulnerable economies.”

More and more Pacific states would approach a state of existential crisis unless development funding was sorted, he said.

Dr Prasad said many planned projects in the region should already be in place.

“We don’t have time on our hands plus the delay in accessing financing, particularly climate resilient infrastructure and for adaptation — then the situation for these countries is going to get worse and worse.”

He wants to “decolonise” aid, giving the developing countries more control over the aid dollars.

More direct donor aid
This would involve more donor nations providing aid directly into the recipient nation’s budgets.

Dr Prasad, who is also the Fiji Finance Minister, has welcomed the budget funding lead taken by Australia and New Zealand, and said Fiji’s experience with Canberra’s putting aid into the Budget had been a great help for his government.

“It allows us, not only the flexibility, but also it allows us to access funding and building our Budget, building our national development planned strategy, and built in with our own locally designed, and locally led strategies.”

He said the new Pacific Resilience Facility, to be set up in Tonga, is one way that this process of decolonising aid could be achieved.

Prasad said the region had welcomed the pledges made so far to support this new facility.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As the curtain fell at the UN climate summit in Baku last Sunday, frustration and disappointment engulfed Pacific delegations after another meeting under-delivered.

Two weeks of intensive negotiations at COP29, hosted by Azerbaijan and attended by 55,000 delegates, resulted in a consensus decision among nearly 200 nations.

Climate finance was tripled to US $300 billion a year in grant and loan funding from developed nations, far short of the more than US $1 trillion sought by Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States.

“We travelled thousands of kilometres, it is a long way to travel back without good news,” Niue’s Minister of Natural Resources Mona Ainu’u told BenarNews.

Three-hundred Pacific delegates came to COP29 with the key demands to stay within the 1.5-degree C warming goal, make funds available and accessible for small island states, and cut ambiguous language from agreements.

Their aim was to make major emitters pay Pacific nations — who are facing the worst effects of climate change despite being the lowest contributors — to help with transition, adaptation and mitigation.

“If we lose out on the 1.5 degrees C, then it really means nothing for us being here, understanding the fact that we need money in order for us to respond to the climate crisis,” Tuvalu’s Minister for Climate Change Maina Talia told BenarNews at the start of talks.

PNG withdrew
Papua New Guinea withdrew from attending just days before COP29, with Prime Minister James Marape warning: “The pledges made by major polluters amount to nothing more than empty talk.”

Fiji’s lead negotiator Dr Sivendra Michael told BenarNews that climate finance cut across many of the committee negotiations running in parallel, with parties all trying to strategically position themselves.

“We had a really challenging time in the adaptation committee room, where groups of negotiators from the African region had done a complete block on any progress on (climate) tax,” said Dr Michael, adding the Fiji team was called to order on every intervention they made.

He said it’s the fourth consecutive year adaptation talks were left hanging, despite agreement among the majority of nations, because there was “no consensus among the like-minded developing countries, which includes China, as well as the African group.”

Pacific delegates told BenarNews at COP they battled misinformation, obstruction and subversion by developed and high-emitting nations, including again negotiating on commitments agreed at COP28 last year.

Pushback began early on with long sessions on the Global Stock Take, an assessment of what progress nations and stakeholders had made to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C.

“If we cannot talk about 1.5, then we have a very weak language around mitigation,” Tuvalu’s Talia said. “Progress on finance was nothing more than ‘baby steps’.”

Pacific faced resistance
Pacific negotiators faced resistance to their call for U.S.$39 billion for Small Island Developing States and U.S.$220 billion for Least Developed Countries.

“We expected pushbacks, but the lack of ambition was deeply frustrating,” Talia said.

Greenpeace Pacific lead Shiva Gounden accused developed countries of deliberately stalling talks — of which Australia co-chaired the finance discussions — including by padding texts with unnecessary wording.

“Hours passed without any substance out of it, and then when they got into the substance of the text, there simply was not enough time,” he told BenarNews.

In the final week of COP29, the intense days negotiating continued late into the nights, sometimes ending the next morning.

“Nothing is moving as it should, and climate finance is a black hole,” Pacific Climate Action Network senior adviser Sindra Sharma told BenarNews during talks.

“There are lots of rumours and misinformation floating around, people saying that SIDS are dropping things — this is a complete lie.”

COP29 presidency influence
Sharma said the significant influence of the COP presidency — held by Azerbaijan — came to bear as talks on the final outcome dragged past the Friday night deadline.

The Azeri presidency faced criticism for not pushing strongly enough for incorporation of the “transition away from fossil fuels” — agreed to at COP28 — in draft texts.

“What we got in the end on Saturday was a text that didn’t have the priorities that smaller island states and least developed countries had reflected,” Sharma said.

COP29’s outcome was finally announced on Sunday at 5.30am.

“For me it was heartbreaking, how developed countries just blocked their way to fulfilling their responsibilities, their historical responsibilities, and pretty much offloaded that to developing countries,” Gounden from Greenpeace Pacific said.

Some retained faith
Amid the Pacific delegates’ disappointment, some retained their faith in the summits and look forward to COP30 in Brazil next year.

“We are tired, but we are here to hold the line on hope; we have no choice but to,” 350.org Pacific managing director Joseph Zane Sikulu told BenarNews.

“We can very easily spend time talking about who is missing, who is not here, and the impact that it will have on negotiation, or we can focus on the ones who came, who won’t give up,” he said at the end of summit.

Fiji’s lead negotiator Dr Michael said the outcome was “very disappointing” but not a total loss.

“COP is a very diplomatic process, so when people come to me and say that COP has failed, I am in complete disagreement, because no COP is a failure,” he told BenarNews at the end of talks.

“If we don’t agree this year, then it goes to next year; the important thing is to ensure that Pacific voices are present,” he said.

Republished from BenarNews with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The United Nations climate change summit COP29 has “once again ignored” the Pacific Islands, a group of regional climate advocacy organisations say.

The Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) said today that “the richest nations turned their backs on their legal and moral obligations” as the UN meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, fell short of expectations.

“This COP was framed as the ‘finance COP’, a critical moment to address the glaring gaps in climate finance and advance other key agenda items,” the group said.

“However, not only did COP29 fail to deliver adequate finance, but progress also stalled on crucial issues like fossil fuel phase-out, Loss and Damage, and the Just Transition Work Plan.

“The outcomes represent a catastrophic failure to meet the scale of the crisis, leaving vulnerable nations to face escalating risks with little support.”

The UN meeting concluded with a new climate finance goal, with rich nations pledging a US$300 billion annual target by 2035 to the global fight against climate change.

The figure was well short of what developing nations were asking for — more than US$1 trillion in assistance.

‘Failure of leadership’
Campaigners and non-governmental organisations called it a “betrayal” and “a shameful failure of leadership”, forcing climate vulnerable nations, such as the Pacific Islands, “to accept a token financial pledge to prevent the collapse of negotiations”.

PICAN said the pledged finance relied “heavily on loans rather than grants, pushing developing nations further into debt”.

“Worse, this figure represents little more than the long-promised $100 billion target adjusted for inflation. It does not address the growing costs of adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage faced by vulnerable nations.

“In fact, it explicitly ignores any substantive decision to include loss and damage just acknowledging it.”

Vanuatu Climate Action Network coordinator Trevor Williams said developed nations systematically dismantled the principles of equity enshrined in the Paris Agreement at COP29.

“Their unwillingness to contribute sufficient finance, phase out fossil fuels, or strengthen their NDCs demonstrates a deliberate attempt to evade responsibility. COP29 has taught us that if optionality exists, developed countries will exploit it to stall progress.”

Kiribati Climate Action Network’s Robert Karoro said the Baku COP was a failure on every front.

‘No meaningful phase out of fossil fuels’
“Finance fell far short, Loss and Damage was weakened, and there was no meaningful commitment to phasing out fossil fuels,” he said.

“Our communities cannot wait for empty promises to materialise-we need action that addresses the root causes of the crisis and supports our survival.”

Tuvalu Climate Action Network’s executive director Richard Gokrun said the “outcome is personal”.

“Every fraction of a degree in warming translates into lost lives, cultures and homelands. Yet, the calls of the Pacific and other vulnerable nations were silenced in Baku,” he said.

“From the weakened Loss and Damage fund to the rollback on Just Transition principles, this COP has failed to deliver justice on any front.”

PICAN’s regional director Rufino Varea described the outcome of the meeting as “a death sentence for millions”.

He said the Pacific Islands have been clear that climate finance must be grants-based and responsive to the needs of frontline communities.

“Instead, developed countries are handing us debt while dismantling the principles of equity and justice that the Paris Agreement was built on. This is a betrayal, plain and simple.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The chart above shows Aotearoa New Zealand’s exports and imports of coal. First, note that the emphasis is on timing, not absolute amounts; Imports have a different scale to Exports. Essentially, imports have been around 10% of exports.

It’s also important to note that most Aotearoan coal is exported, while coal used to generate electricity at the Huntly power station is mainly imported. These are two different grades of coal. So it is to be not unexpected that coal imports will have been high at the same times that coal exports also have been high.

And it’s important to note that these data are for values of coal, not volumes. Values will be affected by fluctuations in world coal prices and by fluctuations in the $NZ exchange rate. (Increases in coal exports from 2000 to 2002 will have reflected the historically low exchange rate then.)

Coal exports actually increased after the November 2010 Pike River explosion; that coalfield was still in development in 2010.

Generally, from 2005 to 2012 the export expansion reflected the world market; noting dips for the 2008 global financial crisis, with a subsequent export of stockpiled coal in 2009. During that coal boom period, more than half New Zealand’s coal exports were to India. There was a resurgence of coal exports to India at the end of the 2010s’ decade.

The lull in 2020/21 reflected to Covid19 crisis. Again, we see an exporting of stockpiles after the crisis eased. In 2023 coal exports plummeted, probably a mix of falling world demand as well as falling New Zealand supply. This is a good sign for global transitioning away from coal, though China’s domestic production and consumption of coal will be rising as it transitions from petrol and diesel cars to electric cars. China will be happy to be using fewer imported fossil fuels.

On the import side, New Zealand’s demand for coal from 2003 to 2020 seems to have reflected the global trend, and it will have reflected a lack of growth in renewable energy generation during the later years of the Clark-led Labour-led government. It was under National that the big fall in coal imports took place.

Coal consumption in New Zealand stabilised in the mid-2010s, but resurged again in 2018, again under a Labour-led government; although, to be fair, 2018 and 2019 mainly reflect economic growth rather than the new government’s priorities.

Coal consumption at Huntly in recent years also reflects drought, meaning less hydro-generation of electricity. There is likely to be a lull in coal imports over the next few months, given that the hydro lakes are full, and the El Niño weather forecast is for a strong contribution from wind generation.

My sense is that increased use of electric vehicles – and increased charging capacity – will lead to another temporary resurgence in coal imports. The 2023 quasi-recession, engineered by the Reserve Bank, may however lead to some offsetting reductions in energy demand. My guess, though, is that there will be a short-lived consumption boom in Aotearoa in 2024 and 2025, as high interest rates pull in hot-money from overseas, holding up the $NZ exchange rate, and leading to a further ‘blow-out’ in New Zealand’s current account deficit; a 30.6 billion dollar annual deficit (7.6% of GDP), slightly less than the record high of nearly 9% of GDP earlier this year.

I look forward to hearing about the new government’s plans for expanded renewable electricity generation, and hope that these plans will not mean the loss of wild rivers such as the Mokihinui. Time will tell; soon, in 2024. This government needs ‘runs on the board’ – outcomes, not just proposals – if it is to survive beyond 2026.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

New Zealand’s international relations are under new management. And Winston Peters, the new foreign minister, is already setting a change agenda.

As expected, this includes a more pro-US positioning when it comes to the Pacific – where Peters will be picking up where he left off. Peters sought to align New Zealand more closely with the United States under his ‘Pacific Reset’ policy that he launched while serving as foreign minister under Jacinda Ardern’s Labour-New Zealand First coalition government from 2017-2020.

Peters is wasting no time in getting back on the foreign affairs horse.

Just three days after being sworn in as a minster, he gave his first speech on foreign policy at the US Business Summit in Auckland last week.

Peters was lavish in his praise for the US in his address, arguing that Washington had been ‘instrumental in the Pacific’s success’. But he noted that ‘there is more to do and not a moment to lose. We will not achieve our shared ambitions if we allow time to drift.’ Adding that ‘speed and intensity’ would be needed, Peters said ‘the good news is that New Zealand stands ready to play its part.’

The early timing of the speech itself is a sign that New Zealand’s new, yet very familiar foreign affairs minister is unlikely to wait around when it comes to taking major decisions.

It was an important, agenda-setting address.

There were strong hints that New Zealand’s new Government wants to move swiftly when it comes to Wellington’s potential involvement in in ‘Pillar II’ of the AUKUS defence pact that currently involves Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Peters’ disclosed in the Q&A to the speech that he had already talked to Judith Collins, the new defence minister, about New Zealand’s AUKUS stance.

The previous Labour government’s position was that AUKUS remained a hypothetical question while no formal offer existed for New Zealand to join ‘Pillar II’ of the high-level defence pact that currently involves Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

But while playing for time in an election year, the then Prime Minister Chris Hipkins signalled in July that New Zealand was at least ‘open to conversations’ about joining the pact in some form. And Labour’s expedited release of three major defence strategy documents in August, just prior to the election campaign, laid the groundwork for at least formal consideration of involvement in AUKUS.

The reports also paved the way for New Zealand to spend vastly more on its military and to take a more security-focused approach to the Pacific – recommendations that Peters will probably be keen to implement.

Wellington and Washington have been becoming closer since at least November 2010, when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited New Zealand’s capital to sign the ‘Wellington Declaration’. The relatively short agreement served to clear the air after decades of chequered bilateral relations stemming from the Fourth Labour Government’s introduction of a nuclear-free policy in the 1980s.

Going nuclear-free (which prevented visits from US warships) saw New Zealand cast out as a US ally. Washington formally suspended its obligations to Wellington under the ANZUS defence treaty in 1986. But nearly 40 years on, US-NZ relations are rapidly deepening, a trend that has been accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Western concerns over China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific.

Since February 2022, New Zealand has imposed sanctions on Russia, joined US-led groupings such as Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP) and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and sent its Prime Ministers to successive NATO summits. And in May 2022, Jacinda Ardern visited Joe Biden at the White House, where a 3000-word joint statement called for ‘new resolve and closer cooperation’.

Meanwhile, a string of senior US officials have visited New Zealand just this year, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Kritenbrink and the White House’s Indo-Pacific coordinator, Kurt Campbell (who Joe Biden recently nominated to become his new Deputy Secretary of State).

If New Zealand does join AUKUS, it could spell the effective end of the country’s ‘independent foreign policy’. The ANZUS break-up of the late 1980s, the end of the Cold War and the acceleration of globalisation had allowed New Zealand to free itself from blocs. Wellington talked to anyone and everyone, building solid, trade-focused relations with China and others in the Global South – while not neglecting Western partners, including the United States.

Peters may think the current geopolitical environment justifies a new approach.

If he does, he should prepare for significant pushback. Helen Clark, who was Prime Minister during Winston Peters’ first term as foreign minister from 2005-8, posted on Friday that New Zealand was now ‘veering towards signing up’ to AUKUS despite bipartisan support over decades for the independent foreign policy stance.

This added to criticism from Clark earlier in the year, including in August, when she argued the new defence blueprint showed New Zealand was ‘abandoning its capacity to think for itself & instead is cutting & pasting from 5 Eyes’ partners’.

It should also be remembered that Winston Peters, while undoubtedly powerful and highly experienced, is only one Government minister. The views of Judith Collins – the defence minister – remain unknown in any detail, while the foreign policy positions of Christopher Luxon seem more centrist than radical.

Moreover, with the US now firmly focused on the war between Hamas and Israel – and its own presidential election year fast approaching – it is far from guaranteed that the hypothetical AUKUS question will turn into a concrete one for New Zealand anytime soon.

Moreover, Peters’ initial ministerial comments on New Zealand’s own position towards the Middle East suggest there is plenty of room for nuance. Calling the death toll in Gaza ‘horrific’, Peters welcomed a short-lived extension to the ceasefire on Friday, but called for all parties to ‘work urgently towards a long-term ceasefire’.

And in a radio interview earlier last week, Peters said ‘the ceasefire is not good enough, we’re going to have find a way forward through this and a peaceful solution – that’s what New Zealand and the Western world has got to put its focus on’.  Peters added ‘internationally we need to be talking to people across the political divide who are making sense on this matter’.

Talking to all sides and playing a small role in facilitating a sustainable political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would very much be in keeping with New Zealand’s independent foreign policy approach – and Winston Peters is already speaking out strongly about the war.

With Christopher Luxon passing up on the opportunity to attend COP28 in Dubai at the weekend, Winston Peters will have the chance to make the Government’s first ministerial trip to the Middle East to begin this dialogue. The Gulf states would be a natural starting point for these discussions.

Meanwhile, on Ukraine – the war that helped to speed up New Zealand’s alignment with the US in 2022 – Peters was open to the idea of New Zealand upgrading its military support to Ukraine by sending Kyiv light armoured vehicles (LAVs). While noting that the decision was not up to him alone, he added ‘if we can help we should be doing the best we can’.

Labour had denied a request from Ukraine to provide the LAVs in 2022 and of late had preferred to make financial contributions to Kyiv’s war effort – the most recent being a $NZ4.7 million package announced by Chris Hipkins in July at the NATO leaders’ summit in Lithuania.

It all adds up to a complex picture.

Winston Peters has no shortage of global issues to address.

And there could be some major changes ahead for New Zealand foreign policy.

*******

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

The COP28 countdown is on.

Over 100 world leaders are expected to attend this year’s UN Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which starts next Thursday.

Among the VIPs confirmed for the Dubai summit are the UK’s Rishi Sunak and Brazil’s Lula da Silva – along with King Charles and Pope Francis.

On the other hand, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping are both unlikely to join in – and neither is Australia’s Anthony Albanese.

It remains to be seen which camp New Zealand’s new Prime Minister will fall into. Christopher Luxon is only expected to be formally sworn in as PM on Monday, following the conclusion of several weeks of coalition negotiations to form a new government.

But in theory, this would still leave plenty of time for Luxon to fly to the ‘World Climate Action Summit’ opening event for world leaders, which is being held from December 1-2.

Luxon positioned his National Party firmly in the centre during the election campaign, committing New Zealand to meeting its emissions reductions targets and telling sceptics ‘you can’t be a climate denier or a climate minimalist in 2023’.

Beyond the issue of climate change itself, COP28 would be a valuable initial networking and relationship-forming opportunity for New Zealand’s new Prime Minister. And to some extent, the Dubai gathering would be a make-up affair for Luxon, after he missed the APEC summit in San Francisco in mid-November due to the ongoing coalition negotiations.

It is safe to say that the ongoing war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas will be a major topic of sideline conversations at this year’s COP.

While Luxon missed the chance to meet Xi and Biden at APEC, COP28 would be a good chance for Luxon to hear the views of a range of other world leaders – particularly voices from across the Middle East.

Somewhat surprisingly, New Zealand’s former PM Jacinda Ardern never went to a COP summit during her six years in office. The last time a New Zealand PM was represented was in 2015, when John Key attended COP21 in Paris.

Coincidentally, 2015 was also the year that Key visited the Gulf states on a three-country tour of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE that sought to jumpstart New Zealand’s bid to strike a free trade deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The bloc’s membership also includes Bahrain, Oman and Qatar.

In September, New Zealand’s then Labour government began talks with the UAE on a new bilateral Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement – or CEPA. The CEPA could be a stepping stone to finalising a wider free trade agreement with the GCC that has been in the works since 2006.

With trade opportunities in the Gulf beckoning and no end in sight to the war in Gaza, the Middle East is likely to be higher up the foreign affairs agenda for New Zealand than might have previously been thought.

On the climate front, COP28’s head appointed by host UAE, Dr Sultan al Jaber, has emphasised ‘inclusivity’ as a key plank of this year’s event. Bringing together a wide range of countries around the table, despite deepening geopolitical polarisation driven by the Gaza and Ukraine wars and tensions in the Indo-Pacific, may be the summit’s most impressive achievement.

Israel pledged in July to send a 1000-strong delegation to Dubai, led by both its Prime Minister and President. The size will now be greatly reduced – but, remarkably, Israel is still coming and will still have a pavilion at COP28. While the war has strained relations between the UAE and Israel that were normalised under the Abraham Accords in 2020, diplomatic ties remain in place.

Speaking shortly prior to the outbreak of the war that began on October 7, the UAE’s Ambassador to New Zealand, His Excellency Mr. Rashed Matar Alqemzi, told me in an interview that ‘we are bringing the world together’ and emphasised the welcome being extended by COP28 to women, religious organisations, youth and indigenous peoples.

In New Zealand’s case, this includes Māori, whose role at Expo 2020 in Dubai was ‘greatly valued’ according to Alqemzi. New Zealand’s Iwi Chairs Forum, a coalition of Māori tribal leaders, was given the task of leading a ‘Festival of Indigenous and Tribal Ideas’ during the Expo. Two years on, COP28 will be held on the same Expo 2020 site on Dubai’s southern fringe.

The aim for ‘full inclusivity’ is more controversial, however, when it refers to the involvement of oil companies and their executives at the summit – including Dr Sultan Al Jaber himself, who also heads the UAE’s state-owned oil company, ADNOC.

Since he was given the role in January, Al Jaber’s appointment has frequently been criticised by climate campaigners, with one likening it to putting a tobacco company in charge of the World Health Organization.

The counter-argument – as put by Al Jaber himself in a speech to oil company executives in October – is that fossil fuel producers are ‘central to the solution’ and need to stop ‘blocking progress’.

While these words are unlikely to convince campaigners who see greenwashing, there is some cause for optimism ahead of COP28.

A recent agenda for the summit released by Al Jaber called for a ‘responsible phase-down of unabated fossil fuels’ – a reference to the burning of oil, gas and coal without the use of carbon capture technology.

The call to ‘phase-down’ the use of at least some fossil fuels altogether represents a small, yet significant shift from earlier this year, when Al Jaber was called out by former UN climate head Christiana Figueres for speaking merely of ‘phasing out fossil fuel emissions’.

On the other hand, ‘phase-down’ is weaker than the total ‘phase-out’ language used by a recent UN report and agreed upon by the EU as its negotiating position for COP28.

The debate over phasing-down vs. phasing-out is unlikely to go away any time soon.

The need for speed has to be balanced with fairness – especially for the world’s poorest.

In his agenda, Al Jaber called for global emissions reductions of 22 gigatons – almost half the current level – by 2030, but also for a ‘just energy transition’ that ensures energy supplies remain affordable and reliable to all.

Threading this needle will not be easy.

Some parallels might be drawn with New Zealand’s own attempts to reduce agricultural emissions, which make up half of the country’s greenhouse gases – mainly due to the methane produced by livestock.

After originally pledging to bring farming into the country’s Emissions Trading Scheme, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour-led Government agreed in 2019 to work with industry groups on an alternative pricing model and technologies to reduce agricultural emissions.

A deal was announced at the end of 2022, but it collapsed this year with key industry players and Christopher Luxon’s National Party withdrawing their support. Now in Government, National is delaying the introduction of a pricing system until 2030 – well beyond Sultan Al Jaber’s deadline for action.

At the global level, agriculture is a small contributor when it comes to emissions.

By far the lion’s share comes from the burning of fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal.

While the Gulf may be looking to a future beyond oil – and focusing on education, services and technology – the fact remains that there are plenty of players with a lot to lose and everything to gain from delaying the decarbonisation process.

New Zealand’s chequered experience with a joint government-industry effort to reduce agricultural emissions may offer a salutary lesson.

Keeping everyone at the table is harder than it looks.

Still, it is worth keeping the bigger picture in mind.

Al Jaber’s drive for inclusiveness is very much in keeping with the UAE’s current overall foreign policy stance.

Despite pressure from Western capitals, Abu Dhabi has steadfastly maintained relations with Moscow since Russia invaded Ukraine – and the UAE has resisted the temptation to cut its newly forged diplomatic ties with Israel, despite overwhelming backing on the ‘Arab street’ for the Palestinian cause.

Meanwhile, with COP28 just around the corner, Ambassador Alqemzi says his message for the summit’s critics is ‘let’s see what the UAE will do – and then we can talk again’.

It is a pivotal time for the Middle East.

Christopher Luxon could learn a great deal in Dubai.

*******

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. Disclosure: Geoffrey attended the recent Global Media Congress in the UAE as a guest of the organisers, the Emirates News Agency.

This decade is the critical moment for making deep, rapid cuts to emissions, and acting to protect people from dangerous climate impacts we can no longer avoid, according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The synthesis report is the culmination of seven years of global and in-depth assessments of various aspects of climate change.

It reiterates that the world is now about 1.1℃ warmer than during pre-industrial times. This already results in more frequent and more intense extreme weather, causing complex disruption and suffering for communities worldwide.

Many are woefully unprepared.

Key takeaway from #IPCC 2023 Synthesis Report for every nation, business, investor & individual who contributes to #climate change: we must move from climate procrastination to climate activation. And we must do it today.https://t.co/wqPf6CveMB

— Inger Andersen (@andersen_inger) March 20, 2023

The report stresses our current pace and scale of action are insufficient to reduce rising global temperatures and secure a liveable future for all. But it also highlights that we already have many feasible and effective options to cut emissions and better protect communities if we act now.

Many countries have already achieved and maintained significant emissions reductions for more than ten years. Overall, however, global emissions are up by 12 percent on 2010 and 54 percent higher than in 1990.

The largest rise comes from carbon dioxide (from the burning of fossil fuels and industrial processes), followed by methane.

The world is expected to cross the 1.5℃ temperature threshold during the 2030s (at the current level of action). Already, the effects of climate change are not linear and every increment of warming will bring rapidly escalating hazards, exacerbating more intense heatwaves and floods, ocean warming and coastal inundation.

These complex events are particularly severe for children, the elderly, Indigenous and local communities, and disabled people.

But in agreeing to this report, governments have now recognised that human rights and questions of equity, loss and damage are central to effective climate action.

New @IPCC_CH Synthesis Report released
One of the most impressive figures relates to the fairness across generations. The generation of my kids born in 2010s will face substantially more heatwaves, heavy rainfall and droughts during an average lifetime than their grandparents. pic.twitter.com/hWivpq74iO

— Erich Fischer (@erichfischer) March 20, 2023

This report also breaks emissions down to households — 10 percent of the highest-emitting households contribute 40-45 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, while 50 percent of the lowest-emitting households (including small islands communities), contribute less than 15 percent of overall greenhouse gases.

Climate-resilient development
The report points to solutions for climate-resilient development, a process which integrates actions to reduce or avoid emissions with those to protect people to advance sustainability. Examples include health improvements that come from broadening access to clean energy and contribute to better air quality.

But the choices we make need to be locally relevant and socially acceptable. And they have to be made urgently, because our options for resilient action are progressively reduced with every increment of warming above 1.5℃.

This report is also significant for recognising the importance of Indigenous knowledge and local community insights to help advance ambitious climate planning and effective climate leadership.

Cities can make a big difference
Cities are key drivers of emissions. They generate around 70 percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally, and this is rising largely through transport systems relying on fossil fuels, building materials and household consumption.

But this also means urban spaces are where we can really exercise climate leadership. Decisions made at the level of local councils are going to be significant globally in terms of bringing national and global emissions down and protecting people.

Cities are sites for solutions where we can decarbonise transport and increase green spaces. While tackling climate risks can feel overwhelming, acting at the city level is a way communities can have more control over reducing emissions and where local action can really make a difference to our quality of life.

We know there is much more money flowing into mitigation than adaptation. But we have to do both now, and move beyond adaptation focused on physical protection (such as sea walls).

We also need to be thinking really carefully about green infrastructure (trees and parks), low-carbon transport and social protection for communities, which includes income replacement, better healthcare, education and housing.

This report was particularly difficult to negotiate because we now live in a changed reality. More and more countries are experiencing very significant losses and damages. As countries face increasingly extreme weather events, the stakes are higher.

Governments everywhere, in my view as a political scientist, are now facing hard choices about how to protect their own national interests while also making significant efforts to tackle our global climate crisis.

In negotiations, larger countries can dominate debate and it can take a long time to get to agreement. This puts enormous pressure on smaller nations, including Pacific delegations with fewer people and diplomatic resources.

This is yet another reason to ensure action is inclusive, fair and equitable.

After working beyond the scheduled conclusion of #IPCC58, exhausted policymakers and authors celebrated the adoption of final outputs of the sixth assessment cycle: the Synthesis of the Sixth Assessment Report and its Summary for Policymakers #AR6

Read ➡️ https://t.co/Qf2U4EXPgJ pic.twitter.com/mQa4R8eu0i

— Earth Negotiations Bulletin (@IISD_ENB) March 20, 2023

For authors of the IPCC core writing team, the past 18 months have been intense. We all felt significant responsibility to accurately summarise years of work, completed by hundreds of our global scientific colleagues, who contributed to six reports in this assessment cycle: on physical science, adaptation and vulnerability, mitigation, and special reports on land, global warming of 1.5℃, and ocean and cryosphere.

These reports show the choices we make in this decade will impact current and future generations, and the planet, now and for thousands of years.

• Fear & Wonder is a new climate podcast, brought to you by The Conversation. It will take you inside the IPCC’s era-defining climate report via the hearts and minds of the scientists who wrote it. The first episode drops on March 23. Learn more here, or subscribe on your favourite podcast app via the icons above.

Dr Bronwyn Hayward, Professor of Politics, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

“Antlers grow through a mechanism that is very similar to cancer. But, because deer can keep that growth in check, they are extremely resilient to cancers. …

“Sardinia’s own dwarf deer, a relative of Ireland’s giant elk, was eradicated within a hundred years of human colonization, some 9,000 years ago.”

Thomas Halliday, Otherlands, p.46

Cancer is one of those c-words which we resile from. The essence of cancer, as a disease in the body, is that a part of the body becomes a tumour which has a ‘malign’ growth imperative; a cellular reproduction program which eventually colonises the body and – if insufficiently checked – kills that whole of which it is a growing part.

A ‘sufficient check’ may sometimes be instigated by the body’s immune system, or may be the result of a ‘rescue mission’ in the form of medical treatment. A third possibility is that the cancer is ‘self-aware’, and at some point contains itself; aware that by killing the whole body it also kills itself.

Deer antlers would appear to be a cancer which the body itself is able to check before that tumour’s growth becomes unsustainable. The ‘intelligence’ of the whole is able to stem the growth of the part, but without destroying that part.

Humankind

The problematic relationship of the human species to Earth – the body-planet – is unmistakable. Humans are a species which threaten the survival of the whole; the whole of which humans are a part. And that is a cancerous threat; a malign growth imperative, from the point of view of Nature; from the perspective of the Earth-ecosystem.

Humankind, homo sapiens, has arguably been a cancer from its very beginnings. Some fauna – such as Sardinia’s dwarf deer – became extinct very soon after human intrusion. Human beings have always had a disproportionate impact on their host ecosystems.

It has now become a mainstream view that the Earth is entering a human-created mass-extinction event. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said yesterday (at the Montreal COP15 Biodiversity Summit): “Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction”. (UN chief urges strong global nature deal to end ‘orgy of destruction’; Reuters, 7 December2022.)

How can the threat posed by humanity to Nature be sufficiently checked? Rescue is out of the question; that would mean an intervention from outside of Earth!

The statistically most likely outcome is that the Earth will reach a tipping point – as in the ‘mass extinction’ events in the distant past – and flip to an altered state which does not have a place for our species, and most other species we know today. When pressed, most of us do accept that this is indeed the most likely outcome. Many of us find this possibility acceptable, however, because we believe – in hope – that the ‘when’ will be beyond the natural lifetimes of everyone on the planet today.

There is another possibility. It requires that the cancer itself be intelligent; noting that intelligence springs from self-awareness. If we (as individual humans) have cancer, we do not expect our tumour – or tumour cells – to be self-aware. But, if we are a cancer, we can be self-aware; we can be aware that the destruction of our whole means the destruction of all the parts of the whole; including the cancer, ourselves. That awareness gives us the capacity to check ourselves; to become a good cancer.

For humanity to be a good cancer – an intelligent self-aware cancer – means humanity has a long-term future; accepting our history as a cancer, while also ensuring that we do not continue to be malignant. We could be like the antlers of a stag, a beautiful accomplishment that stabilises once it has grown sufficiently; we could be intelligent ‘antlers’, a good cancer.

Shall we continue to play the role of a malign tumour? Or shall we be a benign, self-aware, non-suicidal, self-limiting cancer? Can we choose? Or do the myopias and rivalrous divisions within humanity prevent us from protecting the Earth, of which we are a part?

The answers I gave on Tuesday, Predicting the Coming Quarter Century, are both ‘no’ and ‘yes’. The cancer is clearly at an advanced stage. And it’s not curable; indeed, we do not and should not want the Earth to be cured of us. My optimism is that we may navigate the coming critical years. And that – say from 2050 – the Earth’s cancer may enter remission. If so, we, the cancer, may thrive by becoming a good cancer, a survivable cancer, a cancer which the Earth can live with.

To be a good cancer means possessing the individual and collective behavioural awareness that the survival of the Earth ecosystem in its current state is at stake. The tumour of humanity can thrive, as a part of the Nature we cherish in our better moments, once it becomes benign. We need a win-win outcome: Humanity thriving, and Earth surviving in its familiar hospitable state.

Postscript

A cancer is a disease from within which undermines and kills its host; if unchecked. This understanding applies to all our human systems in which individual – or tribal – behaviour may undermine the host system.

Thus, scientists should not undermine science, economists should not undermine economics, communicators should not undermine communication, governments should not undermine government, businesses should not undermine business.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

The recent climate talks in Egypt have left us with a sobering reality: The window for maintaining global warming to 1.5 degrees is closing fast and what is on the table currently is insufficient to avert some of the worst potential effects of climate change. The Nationally Determined Contribution targets of Asian and Pacific countries will result in a 16 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from the 2010 levels. 

The Sharm-el Sheikh Implementation Plan and the package of decisions taken at COP27 are a reaffirmation of actions that could deliver the net-zero resilient world our countries aspire to. The historic decision to establish a Loss and Damage Fund is an important step towards climate justice and building trust among countries.

But they are not enough to help us arrive at a better future without, what the UN Secretary General calls, a “giant leap on climate ambition”. Carbon neutrality needs to at the heart of national development strategies and reflected in public and private investment decisions. And it needs to cascade down to the sustainable pathways in each sector of the economy. 

Accelerate energy transition

At the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), we are working with regional and national stakeholders on these transformational pathways. Moving away from the brown economy is imperative, not only because emissions are rising but also because dependence on fossil fuels has left economies struggling with price volatility and energy insecurity.

A clear road map is the needed springboard for an inclusive and just energy transition. We have been working with countries to develop scenarios for such a shift through National Roadmaps, demonstrating that a different energy future is possible and viable with the political will and sincere commitment to action of the public and private sectors. 

The changeover to renewables also requires concurrent improvements in grid infrastructure, especially cross-border grids. The Regional Road Map on Power System Connectivity provides us the platform to work with member States toward an interconnected grid, including through the development of the necessary regulatory frameworks for to integrate power systems and mobilize investments in grid infrastructure. The future of energy security will be determined by the ability to develop green grids and trade renewable-generated electricity across our borders. 

Green the rides

The move to net-zero carbon will not be complete without greening the transport sector. In Asia and the Pacific transport is primarily powered by fossil fuels and as a result accounted for 24 per cent of total carbon emissions by 2018.

Energy efficiency improvements and using more electric vehicles are the most effective measures to reduce carbon emissions by as much as 60 per cent in 2050 compared to 2005 levels. The Regional Action Programme for Sustainable Transport Development allows us to work with countries to implement and cooperate on priorities for low-carbon transport, including electric mobility. Our work with the Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Cross-border Paperless Trade also is helping to make commerce more efficient and climate-smart, a critical element for the transition in the energy and transport sectors.

Adapting to a riskier future

Even with mitigation measures in place, our economy and people will not be safe without a holistic risk management system. And it needs to be one that prevents communities from being blindsided by cascading climate disasters. 

We are working with partners to deepen the understanding of such cascading risks and to help develop preparedness strategies for this new reality, such as the implementation of the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action for Adaptation to Drought.

Make finance available where it matters the most

Finance and investment are uniquely placed to propel the transitions needed. The past five years have seen thematic bonds in our region grow tenfold. Private finance is slowly aligning with climate needs. The new Loss and Damage Fund and its operation present new hopes for financing the most vulnerable. However, climate finance is not happening at the speed and scale needed. It needs to be accessible to developing economies in times of need.

Innovative financing instruments need to be developed and scaled up, from debt-for-climate swaps to SDG bonds, some of which ESCAP is helping to develop in the Pacific and in Cambodia. Growing momentum in the business sector will need to be sustained. The Asia-Pacific Green Deal for Business by the ESCAP Sustainable Business Network (ESBN) is important progress. We are also working with the High-level Climate Champions to bring climate-aligned investment opportunities closer to private financiers.

Lock in higher ambition and accelerate implementation

Climate actions in Asia and the Pacific matter for global success and well-being. The past two years has been a grim reminder that conflicts in one continent create hunger in another, and that emissions somewhere push sea levels higher everywhere. Never has our prosperity been more dependent on collective actions and cooperation. 

Our countries are taking note. Member States meeting at the seventh session of the Committee on Environment and Development, which opens today (29 November) are seeking consensus on the regional cooperation needed and priorities for climate action such as oceans, ecosystem and air pollution. We hope that the momentum begun at COP27 and the Committee will be continued at the seventy-ninth session of the Commission as it will hone in on the accelerators for climate action.

In this era of heightened risks and shared prosperity, only regional, multilateral solidarity and genuine ambition that match with the new climate reality unfolding around us — along with bold climate action — are the only way to secure a future where the countries of Asia and the Pacific can prosper. 

*******

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

After two weeks of negotiations at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference (COP27) talks at an Egyptian resort, it is now down to the wire.

Diplomats have created proposals on the controversial loss and damage agenda that will be decided upon by politicians.

Robust discussions at the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh have seen many collaborations and discord resulting in negotiators not reaching agreement on funding that would see vulnerable countries compensated for climate change-fuelled disasters caused by developed nations.

A key milestone was reached on Friday morning (New Zealand time), when the European Union shifted its position to support the G7 and China which includes Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Pacific.

The EU along with the United States pushed back this agenda as it feared being put on the hook for payments of billions of dollars for decades or even centuries to come.

However, developing nations and their allies have been able to stir up support, with major voting in favour for the set up of a loss and damage facility. Australia has chosen to keep the discussion open while the US maintained an isolated position, showing no flexibility.

Now, there are three options on the table for politicians to agree upon and they were due to be debated over the next few hours.

Climate change with Al Jazeera.

The Pacific’s call
The Pacific through the G7 and China has stressed the urgency of establishing a loss and damage framework at this COP.

Samoa Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa today called on the nations to place the same level of global urgency as seen for the covid-19 pandemic to meeting the 1.5 Celsius degree pathway.

Fiame said more action was needed on upscaling ambition on funding for loss and damage and must remain firmly on the table as nations continued to witness increasing occurrences and severity of climate change impacts everywhere.

Option one also entails need for loss and damage to be a separate funding from adaptation and mitigation.

Fiji’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Satyendra Prasad, explained there were gaps in trying to conflate the funding intended for other purposes with compensation as they were not the same thing.

Prasad said vulnerable people in the Pacific “are facing the loss of livelihoods, of land and of fundamental cultural and traditional assets”. These were non-economic losses that could not be compensated through adaptation and mitigation funds.

Financial support for loss and damage must be additional to adaptation funding but also differently structured. Option one calls for existing funding pledges to be made operational in the interim for vulnerable nations.

Short notice funding
Pacific’s Adviser for Loss and Damage Daniel Lund said when responding to damage caused by extreme weather events, finance needed to be available at short notice.

Lund added that current funding available was for project-based support under the Green Climate Fund which took around one year from proposal submission to receiving the first disbursement of funds,

“Something like that doesn’t work when the loss and damage are immediate.”

Republic of Palau’s Minister of State, Gustav Aitaro, in his address to world leaders, said, “every time we have a typhoon, we have to shift funds and budgets allocated for breakfast for students to address the damage. We have to shift funds from our hospital to address the damage, and it becomes such a big burden for us to look for funds to replace that.”

He pleaded with parties to understand the Pacific’s situation as it was a matter of life and death and their very existence depended on it.

“How do I explain to young kids in Palau, the children who live on that atoll, that their homes have been damaged by typhoons and we have to rebuild them over again and again? If they ask me why is it a recurring situation, what do I tell them? Who do we blame?

“Our islands, our oceans are our culture, it’s our identity in this world. I’m sure our developing countries share the same concerns and this is why we are asking them to help.”

Kicking the can down the road
Australia and the US have put forward options two and three for consideration. They propose a soft power influence.

They are proposing more time be given to iron out the finer details to establish a loss and damage finance in COP28 and operationalise the funding by COP29 in 2024.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen as saying: “The world is unlikely to come to an agreement at COP27 over contentious calls for wealthy nations to pay loss and damage compensation to developing countries.”

He said: “Let’s just see how the internal discussions go. But I mean, I doubt very much it’ll be a full agreement on that at this COP.”

The two countries who have spent time in the wilderness of climate diplomacy, have also proposed developed nations continue to tap into climate funding made available through bilateral and multilateral arrangements.

This proposal also suggests that any funding made available for vulnerable states can be channelled through developed nation governments, proposing it does not need to be faciliated by a governing body like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Pacific feels this is problematic. Pacific negotiator Sivendra Michael explained: “This is volatile as it depends on the government of the day.”

Finding a way for more capital
Time reports US climate envoy John Kerry as saying: “We have to find a way for more capital to flow into developing countries.”

Kerry added: “I think it’s important that the developed world recognises that a lot of countries are now being very negatively impacted as a consequence of the continued practice of how the developed world chooses to propel its vehicles, heat its homes, light its businesses, produce food.

“Much of the world is obviously frustrated.”

While the US allowed loss and damage finance to be added to the meeting’s formal agenda for the first time, it took the unusual step of demanding that a footnote be included to exclude the ideas of liability for historic emitters or compensation for countries affected by that pollution.

World leaders will now spend the next few hours deciding on which option to take on loss and damage finance.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As the Second Global Ocean Conference opens today in Lisbon, governments in Asia and the Pacific must seize the opportunity to enhance cooperation and solidarity to address a host of challenges that endanger what is a lifeline for millions of people in the region.

If done right ocean action will also be climate action but this will require working in concert on a few fronts.

First, we must invest in and support science and technology to produce key solutions. Strengthening science-policy interfaces to bridge practitioners and policymakers contributes to a sound understanding of ocean-climate synergies, thereby enabling better policy design, an important priority of the Indonesian Presidency of the G20 process. Additionally policy support tools can assist governments in identifying and prioritizing actions through policy and SDG tracking and scenarios development.

We must also make the invisible visible through ocean data: just three of ten targets for the goal on life below water are measurable in Asia and the Pacific. Better data is the foundation of better policies and collective action. The Global Ocean Accounts Partnership (GOAP) is an innovative multi-stakeholder collective established to enable countries and other stakeholders to go beyond GDP and to measure and manage progress towards ocean sustainable development.

Solutions for low-carbon maritime transport are also a key part of the transition to decarbonization by the middle of the century. Countries in Asia and the Pacific recognized this when adopting a new Regional Action Programme last December, putting more emphasis on such concrete steps as innovative shipping technologies, cooperation on green shipping corridors and more efficient use of existing port infrastructure and facilities to make this ambition a reality.

Finally, aligning finance with our ocean, climate and broader SDG aspirations provides a crucial foundation for all of our action. Blue bonds are an attractive instrument both for governments interested in raising funds for ocean conservation and for investors interested in contributing to sustainable development in addition to obtaining a return for their investment.

These actions and others are steps towards ensuring the viability of several of the region’s key ocean-based economic sectors, such as seaborne trade, tourism and fisheries. An estimated 50 to 80 per cent of all life on Earth is found under the ocean surface. Seven of every 10 fish caught around the globe comes from Pacific waters. And we know that the oceans and coasts are also vital allies in the fight against climate change, with coastal systems such as mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows at the frontline of climate change, absorbing carbon at rates of up to 50 times those of the same area of tropical forest.

But the health of the oceans in Asia and the Pacific is in serious decline: rampant pollution, destructive and illegal fishing practices, inadequate marine governance and continued urbanization along coastlines have destroyed 40 per cent of the coral reefs and approximately 60 per cent of the coastal mangroves, while fish stocks continue to decline and consumption patterns remain unsustainable.

These and other pressures exacerbate climate-induced ocean acidification and warming and weaken the capacity of oceans to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Global climate change is also contributing to sea-level rise, which affects coastal and island communities severely, resulting in greater disaster risk , internal displacement and international migration.

To promote concerted action, ESCAP, in collaboration with partner UN agencies, provides a regional platform in support of SDG14, aligned within the framework of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030). Through four editions so far of the Asia-Pacific Day for the Ocean, we also support countries in identifying and putting in place solutions and accelerated actions through regional dialogue and cooperation.

It is abundantly clear there can be no healthy planet without a healthy ocean. Our leaders meeting in Lisbon must step up efforts to protect the ocean and its precious resources and to build sustainable blue economies.

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Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Earlier this week the final report from the IPCC (press release) on climate change was released. While it indicates that it is still technically possible to limit global warming to 1½ degrees; such an outcome is both unlikely and may require more than lots of trees to pull excess carbon from the atmosphere.

While climate change is a major ‘existential’ issue – and may prove to be the most important of such issues – it is hard to focus on it at the moment, with two other more immediate existential issues facing us, neither of which are going to go away in a convenient manner: pestilence, and Putin. (Covid19 is only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of the broader pestilence issue, which was unleashed into our consciousness in 2020; the wider issue relates to the socioeconomic causes and consequences of disease, and other forms of contagion – which are not viral in the microbiological sense.)

There are three determinative options re climate change: prevent, adapt, and hope. These are not mutually exclusive; we (humankind) can and should seek to do all three. But these options represent three different emphases of action or inaction.

Hope

This is not about hoping that the science of carbon gas emissions, global warming and climate change is wrong. Instead it is about gaining a better understanding of what science is and is not, and about the ‘stochastic’ nature of all prediction; including (indeed especially) scientific prediction, which is based on an incomplete and evolving knowledge base.

‘Stochastic’ means that there is a range of statistically possible outcomes, even if our knowledge of the present and past (‘the science’) could be perfect. The ‘unmodified future’ is based on the midpoint of a range of projections (or predictions). If accurate (ie unbiassed), there is a fifty percent chance that the outcome will be ‘worse’ than predicted, and a fifty percent chance that the outcome will be ‘better’ than predicted.

Thus, we may hope that – in the absence of any substantial global or national policy initiatives – the climate change outcome will be substantially better, by pure chance, than the midpoint prediction. Aligned with this, we may hope that, by chance, future scientific discoveries will lead to favourable modifications of our present range of predictions.

As a rough ballpark estimate, I would suggest that the chances of a fortunate outcome following a strategy of inaction might be around five percent; maybe even ten percent. On the opposite extremity of this probability spectrum there would be a similar five to ten percent chance of a truly catastrophic outcome (eg similar to the sea-level impact of Canada’s Laurentide ice sheet melting, just over 10,000 years ago).

Prevent

Assuming the current midpoint scientific prediction, there are – it is argued – policy options that must be implemented in the early 2020s that would lead to a midpoint outcome which falls within the ‘acceptable range’ of 1½ degrees of global warming. (Note that, if we bring this midpoint prediction just to the cusp of the 1½ degree threshold, there is still a fifty percent change of breeching that threshold in practice.)

The question here is: What is the chance that the required political interventions will take place? Given our track record so far – and given the noted existential distractions – the chance that correct and sufficient interventions will take place is about one in a million. Possible, yes, but highly improbable.

This does not mean that preventative policy strategies should not take place; such strategies could increase the chance of a hopeful outcome (eg to twenty percent), and diminish the chance of a truly catastrophic outcome (eg to two percent).

Important in this context is that we may need to adopt a ‘lesser evil’ strategy. And the most important such strategy – increasingly discussed – is a nuclear power strategy.

(Another possible strategy, or even complementary to nuclear power expansion, would be for people to increasingly settle in sunny environments near coasts – including desert environments – whereby solar power could be abundant, and water supplies would be extracted via solar-powered desalination of sea water. This would mean less human encroachment on good farmland, and possibly an increased reliance on urban-hydroponic ‘market-gardening’ for food supplies. And, similar renewable technology could facilitate the development of technologically-advanced hybrid shipping to enhance the supply chain. ‘Hybrid’ could include a greater role for wind, solar, and uranium as fuels for freight transport.)

Nuclear power is clearly a classic example of a ‘lesser evil’. There are well-understood risks of catastrophic accidents with very long-lasting environmental impacts. Further, nuclear power plants are obvious military targets, making it possible to conduct nuclear war without the use of nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless, we (in the west) have been lax in developing nuclear technology in ways which minimise such risks. This is despite that fact that nuclear fuels – especially uranium – are less concentrated (than oil and gas) in politically problematic countries such as Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

China has been less lax. Indeed China, for all its faults, has probably actually done more to decarbonise the earth than any other polity. First, through its post-1980s’ industrialisation, it has enabled much deindustrialisation to take place in the west. This is significant. Second, China has not been afraid to do the research and development work required to bring about twenty-first century nuclear technology, as well as solar and wind generation.

The west can work with China. To some, such cooperation would fall into the ‘lesser evil’ category. The west could start by cutting back on the excesses of ‘political gaslighting’ of China that have been increasing in recent years.

I read the following in the New Zealand Listener (12 March 2022) in a story titled ‘Sino things to come’: “China is happy with nuclear reactors, with 54 of them producing power and another 14 under construction. It has built a new kind of reactor, which doesn’t run on uranium but on thorium. This weakly radioactive metallic chemical element has the potential to produce safer and cheaper nuclear energy while generating a much smaller amount of long-lived radioactive waste.”

This is the kind of initiative that Germany, for example, should and could have been undertaking; instead of becoming reliant on Russian gas while supposedly both decarbonising and denuclearising. What has happened is that Russia has ‘played Germany’, Russia’s greatest historical rival. Whatever happens in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has already defeated Angela Merkel in his politico-economic gamesmanship. And this ‘victory’ of Putin is as much a part of the west’s problem in dealing with him today as is his possession of ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Germany is dependent on Russia.

Just about anything we can do to tilt the odds away from environmental catastrophe can be a good thing; albeit with the understanding that replacing one scenario of catastrophe with another less probable scenario of catastrophe should be undertaken with eyes open.

Adapt

As noted, the probability that our climate-change political target will be met is probably about one in a million. (Anything that helps is better than nothing, of course, though bearing in mind that unintended consequences from political actions – possibly arising from wilful blindness – can undermine the overall success of political interventions.)

Thus, we must adapt to the environmental consequences of our past, present and likely future ‘bad habits’. A commitment to adaption need not undermine preventative policies; it need not be a case of either/or. Adaption strategies should not be seen as acknowledgement of political failure; rather they represent survival realism. Further, the ‘expected investment return’ on a pure adaption strategy would most likely be substantially higher than the expected return on a pure prevention strategy.

We need to learn how to live in, and insure ourselves in, a warmer and stormier world. An important part of this will be indirect, enabling a more equitable world in which it is in the interest of everyone to look to the future as well as to subsist in the present. Further, if we as free(ish) agents are given sufficient autonomy, we can make better choices without looking to governments to make those choices for us. Such ‘civil society’ choices can facilitate a lessening of climate change as well as adaptation to it.

Adaptation to climate change is a mitigation, a lesser evil. Elimination of a problem is clearly better than having to live with a problem. Nevertheless, that’s how life works. Through realism. Our lives are imperfect. Yet we survive, by making difficult trade-offs and by performing practical balancing acts.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.