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.

While Japan’s discharge of nuclear waste waters into the Pacific from its Fukushima nuclear plant has been drawing flak across the Pacific, a high-powered delegation of Chinese ocean and marine scientists and Asia-Pacific scholars from Shandong Province visited Fiji to promote South-South cooperation to mitigate climate change — the Pacific island nations’ biggest security threat.

Facilitated by the Chinese Embassy in Suva, Shandong Province and Fiji signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to exchange scholars and experts from the provincial institution to assist the Pacific Island nation in the agriculture sector.

At the signing event, Agriculture Minister Vatimi Rayalu said Fiji and China had a successful history of cooperating in agriculture.

He told the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation that this initiative was critical to agricultural production to promote heightened collaboration among key stakeholders and help Fiji connect to the vast Chinese market.

Shandong Province has a 3000 km coastline with a population of 100 million. It is China’s third largest provincial economy, with a GDP of CNY 8.3 trillion (US$1.3 trillion) in 2021—equivalent to Mexico’s GDP.

The province has also played a major role in Chinese civilisation and is a cultural center for Confucianism, Taoism and Chinese Buddhism.

On August 30, during a day-long conference at the University of the South Pacific under the theme of sustainable development of small island states, scholars from Shandong Province and the Pacific exchanged ideas on cooperation in the sphere of the ocean and marine sciences, and education, development and cultural areas.

Chinese assistance welcomed
In a keynote address to the conference, Fiji’s Education Minister Aseri Radrodro welcomed China’s assistance to foster a scholars exchange programme and share best practices for improved teaching and learning processes.

He said: “We are restrategising our diplomatic relations via education platforms disturbed by the pandemic.”

Emphasising that respect is an essential ingredient of Pacific cultures, he welcomed Chinese interest in Pacific cultures.

Also, he invited China to assist Fiji and the region in areas such as marine sciences, counselling, medical services, IT, human resource management, and education policies and management.

“Overall, sustainable development for Small Island States requires a realistic approach that integrates social, economic, and environmental considerations and collaborations among governments, civil society, international organisations, and the private sector that is essential for achieving sustainable development goals,” he told delegates.

Radrodro invited more Chinese scholars to visit the Pacific to increase cultural understanding between the regions and suggested developing a school exchange programme between Fiji and China for young people to understand each other.

The Chinese ambassador to Fiji, Zhou Jian, pointed out that China and the Pacific Island Countries (PICs), were connected by the Pacific Ocean and in a spirit of South-South cooperation, China already had more than 20 development cooperation projects in the region (he listed them) and 10 sister city arrangements across the region.

Building a human community
Pointing out that his province’s institutions have some of the prominent scholars in the world on climatic change action and marine technology, the Vice-Chairman of Shandong Provincial Committee, Wang Shujian, said he hoped that these institutions would help to build a human community with a shared future in the Pacific.

Many Chinese speakers reflected in their presentations that their cooperative ventures would be in line with the Chinese government’s current international collaboration push known as the “Global Development Initiative”.

This initiative has eight priority areas: poverty alleviation, food security, pandemic response and vaccines, financing for development, climate change and green development, industrialisation, digital economy, and connectivity in the digital era.

Jope Koroisavou of the Ministry of iTaukei (indigenous) affairs explained that the “Blue Pacific” leaders in the region talk about is a way of life that “bridges our past with our future,” and it was important to re-establish the balance between taking and giving to nature.

He listed three takeaways in this respect: cultural resilience and preservation, eco-system stewardship and conservation, and community component and inclusive decision-making.

Professor Yang Jingpeng from the Centre for South Pacific Studies at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications acknowledged that they needed to learn from indigenous knowledge, where indigenous people were closely connected to the environment.

Bio-diversity, climate action, South-South cooperation
“They play an important role in protecting biodiversity,” he noted. “Their knowledge of nature will be greatly beneficial to address climatic change”.

He expressed the wish that under South-South cooperation, their centre would be able to work with this knowledge and scientific methodologies to mitigate climatic change.

Mesake Koroi of the FBC noted that Pacific Islanders needed to get over the idea that because indigenous villagers practice subsistence farming, they were poor when, in fact, they were rich in traditional knowledge, which was important to address the development and environmental challenges of today.

“Using this traditional knowledge, people don’t go out fishing when the winds are blowing in the wrong direction or the moon is not in the correct place”, he noted.

“In my village, 10,000 trees will be planted this year to confront climatic change.”

On an angry note, he referred to Japan’s dumping of nuclear-contaminated water to the Pacific Ocean using a purely “scientific” argument, which he described as “inexcusable vulgar, crude and irresponsible”.

He asked if science said was so safe, why did they not use it for irrigation in Japan?

Nuclear tests suffering
Koroi lamented that historically, major powers had used the Pacific for nuclear testing without respect for the islanders’ welfare — who had to suffer from nuclear fallouts.

“The British, French, and Americans are all guilty of these atrocities, and now the Japanese”, noted Koroi.

Since China was coming to the Pacific without this baggage, he hoped this would transform into a desire to work with the people of the Pacific for their welfare.

Professor He Baogang, of Deaking University in Australia, noted that though the Chinese mindset acknowledged that dealing with climate change was a human right (health right) issue, it still needed to be central to their approach to the problem.

“This should be laid down as important, ” he argued, and suggested that this could be demonstrated by working on areas such as putting green shipping corridors into action.

“China and Pacific Island countries need to look at an agreement to decarbonise the shipping industry,” he argued. “This conference needs to address how to proceed (in that direction)”.

Pointing out that there was a long history — going back to more than 8000 years — of Chinese ancestry among some Pacific people, pointing out that some Māori traditional tattoos were similar to the Chinese tattoos, Professor Chen Xiaochen, executive deputy director, Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies, East China Normal University, noted “now we are looking for common ground for Pacific development needs”.

Knowing each other better
In an informal conversation with IDN, one of the professors from China said that the time had come for the people of China and the Pacific to come to know each other better.

“Chinese students hardly know about Pacific cultures and the people,” he told IDN, adding, “I suppose the Pacific people don’t know much of our cultures as well.”

He believes closer collaboration with universities in Shandong Provincial would be ideal “because it is a centre of Chinese civilisation”.

“Now the Pacific is looking north,” noted Professor Xiaochen, adding, “my flight from Hong Kong was full of Chinese tourists coming South to Fiji”.

Kalinga Seneviratne is a visiting consultant with the University of the South Pacific journalism programme. IDN-InDepthNews is the flagship news service of the nonprofit Inter Press Syndicate. Republished in collaboration with Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

There is “is much to win by trying” to take action on climate change — that is a key finding in a major new international climate report the UN chief is calling a “survival guide for humanity”.

It is something of a mic drop moment for the army of scientists who wrote it — the culmination of seven years’ work and three previous lengthy reports.

Thousands of scientific studies and nearly 8000 pages of findings have been boiled down in the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released overnight.

In a nutshell, it said huge changes were needed to stave off the worst climate predictions but it was not too late.

“This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action & shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.” – #IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee on the release of #IPCC’s Synthesis Report.

Read here 👉 https://t.co/zAMzd12lR7 pic.twitter.com/YcCqIHxuLJ

— IPCC (@IPCC_CH) March 20, 2023

Pacific Climate Warriors Te Whanganui-a-Tara coordinator Kalo Afeaki agrees there is no time for despair.

“My family live in Tonga, my father has an export business, my brother works with [him], his family depends on that livelihood,” he said.

“We do not have the luxury of being able to turn our backs on the climate crisis because we are living with it daily.”

The IPCC authors were optimistic significant change can happen fast — pointing to the massive falls in the price of energy from the sun and wind.

New Zealand has seen a big increase in the number of renewable energy projects in the works.

University of Otago senior lecturer Dr Daniel Kingston said the world had the tools it needed to reduce emission.

“We can still do something about this problem, and every small change that we make makes a difference and decreases the likelihood of major, abrupt, irreversible changes in the climate system.”

Those impacts need to be avoided at all costs — there are tipping points after which comes staggering sea level rise, storms and heat waves that could imperil swathes of humanity.

No country too small
Aotearoa New Zealand has an important role to play. It is one of the largest emitters per capita in the OECD, and its emissions, combined with the other smaller countries, adds up to about two-thirds of the world’s total.

New Zealand’s gross emission peaked in 2005 and have essentially plateaued, while other countries, including the UK and US, have actually made reductions.

Dr Kingston said Aotearoa finally had comprehensive emissions reduction plans on the books.

“Now’s the time to be doubling-down on our climate change policies, not pressing pause or scaling them back in any way.”

Action would never be cheaper than it was now, and not making enough cuts would be far more expensive in the long run.

Humans at fault
Meanwhile, the reports showed human activities had unequivocally caused global surface temperatures to rise: No ifs, no buts.

Massey University emeritus professor of sustainable energy and climate mitigation Ralph Sims said emissions needed to be slashed in the cities and the countryside alike.

Without a doubt farmers needed to cut methane emissions, but people also needed to eat less meat, he said.

Professor Sims said cities had a huge role to play.

“Design the cities around… public transport. [Putting] it onto the cities to plan for a more viable future means that local people can get involved locally.”

Afeaki said some Pacific nations would not survive unless the world got real about cutting emissions.

“When people are feeling disheartened they really need to understand the humans on the other side of this crisis,” he said.

“It is easy to be deterred by numbers, by the science, which isn’t always positive, but you have to also remember that this is happening to someone.”

Afeaki said Pacific communities’ experience living with climate change meant they should be given lead roles in coming up with solutions.

The IPCC scientists have now done their part, there likely will not be another report like this until the end of the decade. It is now time for the government, and for everybody, to act.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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

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.

*******

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.

————-

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.

A View from Afar – In this podcast, political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning will discuss two issues: the evolution of new generation attack drones; and the COP26 meeting in Glasgow this week. Specifically, Buchanan and Manning will unpack:

Whether Geopolitics has railroaded a broad-based consensus of climate interventionism

Why Russia and China abandoned the Cop26 multilateral forum?

How mostly developed nations state the take away agreements help address climate change, and how Greenpeace and many other environment groups say fundamental problems remain with how developed nations address the climate change challenge.

ALSO: We discuss the latest in the evolution of high-tech militarised attack drones. What can we now expect to see? And, how will countries defend themselves against AI driven attacks?

Join Paul and Selwyn for this LIVE recording of this podcast while they consider these big issues, and remember any comments you make while live can be included in this programme.

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Matthew Scott

The beach is vanishing, one day at a time. The sea approaches the coastal village. It will not be negotiated with.

With seawater flooding the water table, crops that have fed the islanders for centuries are losing viability. The problem is invisible, under the people’s feet. But it demands change.

Each year, the cyclones have seemed to get more volatile and less predictable. What used to be a cycle of weathering the storm and rebuilding has become a frenetic game of wits with the elements.

In 2012, 3.8 percent of the total GDP of the Pacific Islands region was spent on the rebuilding efforts needed after natural disasters.

In 2016, that number had risen to 15.6 percent.

The effects of climate change are increasing the volatility and unpredictability of tropical cyclones in the Pacific.

That number has nowhere to go but up.

This story is playing out all over the Pacific, where economically vulnerable nations are some of the first to become victims to the encroaching climate crisis. Countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu, which have contributed least to the carbon emissions driving climate change, are on the brink of becoming its first casualties.

With millions of lives in the balance, this is a moral issue. New Zealand has responded according to its conscience.

Or at least it appears so.

The New Zealand Aid Programme sends 70.7 percent of its aid to countries in the Pacific. This is a higher proportion of our foreign aid budget than any other country. As such, New Zealand is inextricably entwined with funding and encouraging processes of climate adaptation and mitigation in the region.

However, recent findings from the studies of Professor Patrick D Nunn from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, suggest that the most common forms of climate aid to Pacific nations breed economic dependency and fail to help them create a sustainable and self-reliant future.

On the surface, New Zealand’s climate aid policies seem like a life preserver to its drowning neighbours. But when the programme is considered in the long-view, does that life preserver come with a dog collar?

Ruined sea walls line the beaches of the South Pacific, a visual reminder to the people of the islands that the promise of help is sometimes broken.

Why should NZ help?
New Zealand has long played a custodial role in the Pacific. A shared colonial history and geographical location has created a familial bond between New Zealand and countries like the Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga.

Employment opportunities stimulated immigration to New Zealand after World War Two, when the NZ government opened its doors to the Pacific to fill labour shortages. Soon, the industrial areas of New Zealand cities were centres of the Pacific diaspora.

Nowadays Auckland is the biggest Pasifika city in the world.

But there was always a two-faced element to New Zealand’s treatment of the Pacific. It welcomed Pacific people in on the one hand, but then punished them and sent them away with the other.

Norman Kirk’s government introduced the Dawn Raids in 1973, when crack police squads stormed homes and workplaces looking for overstayers – countless migrants from the Pacific were separated from their families, lives and livelihoods.

Between 2015 and 2019, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade provided $200 million in climate aid to the Pacific.

Does the same flavour of double-dealing hang over New Zealand’s climate aid programme?

“People argue that aid is buying influence,” says Professor Patrick D Nunn. “I don’t think they are far off the mark.”

New Zealand’s motivations for climate aid in the Pacific are murky when the communication within the government bodies responsible is studied.

“The region is also that part of the world where our foreign policy ‘brand’ as a constructive and principled state must most obviously play out,” wrote NZ’s Ministry of Foreign  Affairs and Trade (MFAT) in its October 2017 Briefing to an Incoming Minister.

This suggests an ulterior motive to the helping hand. The MFAT website says that strengthening New Zealand’s national “brand” is in order to promote New Zealand as a “safe, sustainable and stable location to operate a business and to invest”.

So New Zealand may have self-interest at the heart of its movements in the Pacific. As a capitalist nation holding its breath through a decades-long wave of neoliberalism, this is no surprise.

Where is the money going?
But that doesn’t mean that New Zealand’s climate aid in the Pacific cannot have altruistic effects. Surely it is the outcome rather than the intention that ultimately matters.

However, it is still necessary examine where New Zealand’s money is going.

A 2020 study from Professor Nunn and a group of other academics casts doubt on whether current modes of climate adaptation can effectively promote long-term solutions for the islands.

“It’s unhelpful in the sense that it’s implicitly encouraged that Pacific Island countries don’t build their own culturally-based resilience,” Professor Nunn says. “It’s encouraged that they adopt global solutions that aren’t readily transferable to a Pacific Island context.”

One of the more visible examples is the ubiquitous sea wall. Sea walls protect coastal communities from rising sea levels throughout New Zealand, so it seems obvious that they could do the same job for Pacific neighbours.

But New Zealand invests in building its walls to stand for the long-term, and the country has access to the capital and human resources needed to maintain them.

This is not always the case in the developing countries of the South Pacific.

“Usually there’s not enough data to inform the optimal design of sea walls,” says Professor Nunn. “So the sea wall collapses after two years. Then the community struggles to find funds to fix it because they are not part of the cash economy.”

Professor Nunn blames this recurring issue on the short-sightedness of foreign aid programmes from the governments of developed countries in the region.

“You can’t uncritically transfer solutions from a developed to a developing country context – however obvious they seem.”

Academic and journalist Professor David Robie, the recently retired director of the Pacific Media Centre, sees New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific as neocolonial.

“We build sea walls where they would plant mangroves,” he says. Mangroves, of course, don’t require upkeep, and they are a solution that people in the Pacific have used for centuries. They might not always fulfil the urgent interventions required during the climate crisis, but as New Zealand seeks to advance our “brand” in the Pacific, do we give them due consideration, or do we fall back on our own western solutions by default?

“It would have been better to not have had such a neocolonial approach,” says Professor Robie. “We could have encouraged the Pacific countries to be a lot more self-reliant.”

Short-term solutions for long-term problems
According to an MFAT Official Information Act release on climate change strategy, climate aid consists of 190 different activities across the Pacific. Of these activities, the largest focus is put on agriculture (25 percent), followed by energy generation and supply (20 percent) and disaster risk reduction (12 percent).

With the long-term projections of sea levels rising, are these areas enough to safeguard our Pacific whanau long into the future?

Professor Nunn spoke about plans by Japanese foreign aid to divert the mouth of the Nadi River in Fiji in order to stop the growingly frequent flooding of Nadi town.

“It would be far more useful for the Japanese government to develop a site for the relocation of Nadi town,” Professor Nunn said. “Somewhere inland, somewhere in the hinterland. Put in utilities and incentivize relocation of key services – because the situation is not going to improve. In 10-15 years, large parts of Nadi town are going to be underwater.”

So it goes across the Pacific.

New Zealand’s strategies of capacity building and disaster management are noble on the surface, but are we arranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

Climate change is an epoch-defining force that is inevitably going to render swathes of the globe uninhabitable. We can fund short-term adaptation to these issues and feel better about ourselves and our Pacific “brand”, but the real solutions lie in establishing humane systems of relocation around the Pacific.

Some of this comes in the form of increasing New Zealand’s own quota for climate migrants seeking asylum in New Zealand. For countries that consist of primarily low-lying atolls such as Kiribati, leaving their ancestral homeland will one day sadly be the only option.

Other nations such as Fiji and Samoa have the capacity to weather the storm if development is focused in the right direction – the gradual relocation of population centres inland, away from the risks of increasing flood frequency and rising tides.

MFAT has stated in an Official Information Act release of July 2019 that three quarters of their investment into climate aid “will go towards supporting communities to adapt in situ to the effects of climate change, which will enable them to avert and delay relocation”.

These goals are stuck in the short-term. This is procrastination on an international scale. The effects of climate change are no longer just theories, or nightmares that may or may not come true.

There is a clear road map to a future in which many areas in the Pacific are in peril. New Zealand has a moral duty to make sure that the effect of its aid helps not just the current members of Pacific whanau, but also the generations to come.

Examining NZ’s aid
In July, 2019, an inquiry was launched by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee into Aotearoa’s Pacific aid. The committee examined every facet of how the lion’s share of our foreign aid budget is spent. With Pacific aid, this means a discussion of climate change is inevitable.

Their findings were released last August.

Overall, the committee paints the picture of a considered approach to foreign aid, with New Zealand making an effort to take responsibility as the most developed economic power in our geopolitical bloc to bring about a world in which people have social mobility and human rights are protected.

Much of the report, however, centred around the committee’s recommendations as to how MFAT should proceed.

Some of these recommendations shine a light on the potential problems inherent to our regime of climate aid.

They recommended that the aid programme take steps to “more deeply engage with local communities, ensuring all voices within those communities are heard, and their viewpoints respected.” This suggests a certain level of overhanded detachment coming from New Zealand’s aid programme.

They also suggested that MFAT places a heightened emphasis on social inclusion step up efforts to make sure development is centred around locally-owned industry.
The committee also asked for public submissions.

Some of these provided perspectives that the committee themselves may have glanced over.

“Pushing New Zealand values into the Pacific—particularly when tied to monetary support—could be viewed as a renewed form of colonialism,” submitted one anonymous member of the public. Another raised that “greater engagement is needed with local communities to ascertain both their values and needs, and for aid to be appropriately tailored.”

These criticisms are not definitive proof of missteps on the part of the ministry. However, they are talking points that the ministry themselves seem unwilling to address.

When questions of neo-colonialism and unsustainable aid programmes were raised to the ministry, a spokesperson provided answers that glossed over the criticisms.

“Four principles underpin New Zealand’s international development cooperation: effectiveness, inclusiveness, resilience and sustainability,” said an MFAT spokesperson when asked if there was a risk of breeding economic dependency via New Zealand forms of aid.

“Their purpose is to guide us and those we work with in our shared aim to contribute to a more peaceful world, in which all people live in dignity and safety, all countries can prosper, and our shared environment is protected.”

It sounds admirable, and it places New Zealand on the right side of history. But it doesn’t answer the specific concerns that have been levelled at the aid programme – the fact that deliberately or not, New Zealand may be guilty of building a relationship of dependency with countries in the Pacific.

Are answers like these just a further attempt to bolster the “brand” that New Zealand is trying to sell to the Pacific, and indeed the rest of the world?

Pouring money into the problem
When New Zealand signed the Paris Agreement in 2016, we were putting ourselves forward as one of the countries committed to strengthening the global response to the burgeoning climate crisis. John Key pledged to provide up to $200 million in climate aid over the next four years. Most of this was focused on the Pacific.

The Paris Agreement recognised that the Pacific was indeed one of the world’s most vulnerable regions when it comes to the effects of climate change – this is for a multitude of reasons. There are the obvious, such as the fact that countries consisting of low-lying atolls such as Kiribati and the Marshall Islands are the most at risk from rising sea levels, but the reasons are as numerous as they are insidious.

Small populations reliant on a narrow array of staple crops and food sources put the people of the Pacific in a particularly precarious position. The effects of colonisation have left these countries socio-economically deprived and in thrall to developed countries like Australia, New Zealand, the United States and China.

So the reasons why the Pacific is so vulnerable to the crisis are complex and various. It therefore follows that the solutions to the crisis are as well.

Chief among these is shifting from expensive answers to the problem to those that don’t cost anything at all. Cashless adaptation could come in the form of education or placing a greater emphasis on indigenous solutions to climate change.

Steering the ship towards cashless adaptation would reduce vulnerable countries’ reliance on their wealthier neighbours.

Another solution is the slow relocation of coastal cities into the hinterlands of the countries, such as Fiji’s Nadi, where flooding in the central business district is becoming more and more frequent.

Foreign aid can play a part in encouraging and funding such projects, but at the end of the day, it is the governments of these countries themselves that hold the reigns. The city of Nadi will not be moved without the constant efforts of the Fijian government over the course of generations.

In their 2019 paper “Foreign aid and climate change policy”, Daniel Y Kono and Gabriella R Montinola claim that while foreign aid for climate adaptation and mitigation is on the rise, the manner in which it is employed may render it toothless and unable to make changes for the people of the Pacific in the long term.

The main reason for this conclusion is that there has been little to no evidence that foreign climate aid in Pacific nations can be correlated with Pacific governments enacting policies addressing the crisis.

It is arguable whether foreign aid can be expected to affect the policies of recipient governments. However, it is undeniable that solutions to climate change require the synchronised action from both suppliers and recipients of this aid.

Help comes on NZ’s terms
In order to plant the seeds for long-term viable responses to climate aid, New Zealand’s approach must consider the worldview of people in the Pacific.

Professor Nunn sees this as another form of developed countries employing neocolonial tactics in order to build relationships of dependency with countries in need.

“You cannot take your worldviews and impose them on people who have different worldviews and expect those people to accept them,” he said.

On many of the islands of the Pacific, the scientific worldview does not hold automatic precedence over spiritual and mythological views, as it does in the secular West.

Low science literacy and a stronger connection to nature through cultural tradition and ritual such as religion mean that if the sea level rises, people in the Pacific often tend to consider it a divine act.

Practitioners of foreign aid need to show cultural competency if their approach is going to be picked up by the people of the Pacific.

“You’ve got to understand why your interventions are failing,” says Professor Nunn. “You go in there and argue on the basis of science. Nobody in rural Pacific Island communities gives a stuff about science. What they understand is God. To ignore that and pretend that it’s not important is just going to result in a continuation of failed interventions.”

Understanding is the route to developing a system of long-term and sustainable examples of climate change adaptation and mitigation in the Pacific.

“Empowering Pacific Island communities means understanding them,” says Professor Nunn. “Not just what their priorities are, but also how they’ve reached those priorities.”

With crisis comes opportunity
Prior to 2020, climate change was on its way to being a top-priority issue to governments all over the world – particularly those in highly-affected regions like the Pacific. Then 2020 happened.

Covid-19 has dominated public talk for months and there are no signs of this changing any time soon. Big ticket issues like social inequality and climate change found themselves on the back-burner during the New Zealand election, and the same could be said in societies around the world.

The virus has brought global tourism to a standstill and threatened the safety of many already vulnerable indigenous populations. Both impoverished and tourism-reliant nations in the Pacific have been placed in drastically uncertain financial straits.

Although the rates of infection have been fortunately low across the Pacific, countries like Fiji and the Cook Islands have lost their main source of income – holidaymakers seeking a sun-soaked patch of white-sand beach.

The beaches are there waiting, but the planes haven’t begun to land yet.

With the threat of economic ruin hanging over their heads, Pacific nations’ climate change options have been reduced even further.

But from the perspective of analysing the problematic elements of New Zealand’s climate aid programme, there is a silver lining.

In April, MFAT reported that almost two-thirds of their development programmes had been affected by covid-19 in some way. In the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee’s Inquiry into New Zealand’s aid to the Pacific report, it is said that recovery from this will require a range of responses, including stopping, reassessing and adapting, or re-phasing projects on an individual basis.”

Herein lies the opportunity.

The aid programme is on the verge of a massive shake-up, as MFAT reanalyses the best approach in a covid-stricken world. Now is the time for reassessment of our position as aid donors with the work of Professor Nunn in mind.

The committee’s report went on to say “the ministry pointed out that travel restrictions due to covid-19 mean that it will need to rely more heavily on local staff and expertise to provide aid. The ministry also hopes to move to a more adaptive and locally-empowered model.”

So it may be the virus that forces our hand and has the end result of more of the authority placed locally across the Pacific.

If we are indeed guilty of perpetuating a neo-colonial system of foreign aid, this could certainly be part of the remedy.

We are being given a nudge, if not a shove – an impetus to change. We can resist that or take the opportunity in our hands.

Now is the time to change, and ask the government for more equitable and sustainable forms of climate assistance in the Pacific.

Matthew Scott is an Auckland-based journalist for Newsroom who is interested in New Zealand’s place in the Pacific. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and his stories can be seen here.  Twitter: @mnscott1992

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

This week New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern concluded her first bilateral with China’s two top leaders President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang and ended with clear signals the two countries are poised to build on the $30billion two-way trade relationship.

But there was more to this bilateral meeting than simply New Zealand – a comparatively small South Pacific economy – solidifying a progressive trade relationship with a global economic superpower. There were significant signals given by both state leaders involving multilateralism and a vision for a non-fossil-fuel future.

For more on this, listen to Radio New Zealand’s The Panel where Selwyn Manning joined Verity Johnson and Wallace Chapman to discuss the NZ-PRC bilateral (On fossil fuels + NZ-PRC’s Relationship )

***

As Ardern said: “We also discussed our shared interest in strengthening the international rules-based order and on climate change, as an issue of global importance.” As such, both New Zealand and the People’s Republic of China indicated significant stances in foreign policy terms.

Firstly, the reference to “international rules-based order” appears a signal that New Zealand Government would support China in principle should it seek recourse through World Trade Organisation rules when countering any escalation of the United States/China trade war. The WTO, and other multilateral bodies such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, are central to New Zealand’s independent foreign policy. There’s consistency here. New Zealand simply cannot support the alternative, unilateralism, even when disestablishment threats against multilateral bodies are being pitched by New Zealand’s most significant security partner, the United States.

This is a diplomatic delicacy, a courageous statement, that Ardern was willing to deliver.

On numerous occasions this year United States’ President Donald Trump warned that his administration would abandon the WTO should it not reform and emerge with a trade-rules framework that embraces US trade interests. Trump’s threats also signalled how his Administration would track further toward isolationist-unilateralism should China object to any abuses to WTO rules and international trade law.

You can expect that the US Embassy was busy overnight filing its briefing to Washington DC.

Secondly, China included a gutsy clause in the NZ-China Joint Climate Change Statement that was issued by both Premier Li and Prime Minister Ardern after their meeting.

The PRC and NZ stated: “Both sides recognise the importance of the reform of fossil fuel subsidies, which will bring both economic and environmental benefits, thereby supporting their shared global commitment to sustainable development.”

The idea of abandoning fossil fuel subsidies was first advanced by Jacinda Ardern at her first APEC leaders’ summit shortly after becoming prime minister. There, at APEC, she argued on a panel consisting of herself and the vice chair of Exxon Mobil that fossil fuel subsidies ought to be abandoned – that governments should cease subsidising fossil fuel industries and channel their economies toward developing a future free of fossil fuel carbon emissions.

Clearly, the PRC heard her message and was ready to signal support for it as an ideal. This is a win for Ardern. It is also a respectful acknowledgement that the Asia Pacific’s economic superpower rates her as a significant leader on the global stage.

Additionally, the clause also indicates China – in a week where reliable PMI figures showed it in a very favourable space – that it is confident that its future lies less with the old technologies that assisted the development of today’s western economies and more with the new-tech solutions to global economic development.

The USA will be aware that this move signals that China sees itself as more advanced in the area of AI, machine learning, alternative energy transportation and development than its European and United States counterparts.

Ardern has demonstrated how important it is to meet with significant powers face to face. At such bilaterals, she can offer respect and determination while her counterparts observe her honest, trustworthy, progressive no-nonsense leadership in action.

New Zealand will be the beneficiary of this approach: Ardern said: “I also raised with President Xi the importance New Zealand places on upgrading and modernising our Free Trade Agreement with China – an ambition that he shared.”

Both states have agreed to progress our trade relationship well beyond the current record levels of two-way trade (currently at $30b per annum).

With Premier Li, Ardern said: “We discussed the FTA upgrade, and agreed to hold the next round of negotiations soon and to make joint efforts towards reaching an agreement as soon as possible.

“We also discussed China’s Belt and Road Initiative, noting that the Minister for Trade and Export Growth, David Parker, would lead a business delegation to the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in April. This will help identify opportunities for mutually beneficial and transparent cooperation so we can complete a work plan as soon as possible.

“I reiterated to Premier Li that New Zealand welcomes all high quality foreign investment that will bring productive economic growth to our country.”

This latter point deserves some caution. China has expressed interest in furthering infrastructure investment within New Zealand – including investments that could be argued are contrary to New Zealand’s strategic interests, into the dairy and primary diversification sectors. While any New Zealand Government ought to proceed with caution here, if our diplomatic trade-negotiation team is buoyed by the country’s new leadership style, then perhaps mutual beneficial ventures can advance beyond a Joint Climate Change Statement.

PS: While in Beijing, the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also invited President Xi for a State visit to New Zealand as part of New Zealand’s hosting of APEC in 2021.

By Rahul Bhattarai

A leading academic on peace research issues has called for increased policy making efforts to face up to the challenges of Pacific “relocation” at a weekend conference of global climate and conflict researchers.

“A major conflict-creating component of climate change in the Pacific is the forced reallocation of people,” said Professor Kevin Clements, founding director of Otago University’s National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) and also secretary-general of the Tokyo-based Toda Peace Institute.

“Pacific nations only have three choices – adaptation, mitigation and relocation,” he said.

READ MORE: Climate change and security big focus for Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru

Climate change scholars from around the world gathered at the University of Otago’s Auckland Centre over the weekend to discuss interrelationships between climate change and conflict.

Pacific Island nations are in the front line of global climate change crises, raising sea level and “drowning” lands are forcing thousands of islanders to relocate far away from their homelands and atolls.

-Partners-

This forced reallocation created a fertile ground for conflict in the other Pacific nations, Professor Clements said.

Existential challenge
Failure to make the needed changes in time would impose an “inevitable existential challenge to us all”.

Failure to adapt or mitigate the negative effects of climate change would ultimately result in forced relocations, “forcing people from your own land unto other people’s land and so that’s really beginning to be a major conflict creator in Fiji.”

“Climate change is a major existential challenge for everybody,” Professor Clements said.

Policy makers still had no solid plan to deal with conflict created by climate change.

Dealing with the issues of climate change and conflict was one of the questions which were difficult to answer.

“How do states and peoples create spaces of inevitable migration of people of these countries,” asked Professor Clements.

“Every Pacific nation has been challenged by a combination of elevated sea level and king tides.”

Significant challenge
Having these two combinations posed a significant challenge to the local environment.

“Arable land diminishes, and water quality diminishes as it becomes more saline, and with global warming is also challenging and declining fish resources,” he said.

“Pacific Island countries need to ask themselves, what do they need to adapt these new challenges How can they mitigate their effects and, if they can’t do that, where will they go?” Professor Clements said.

Dr Bob Lloyd, a climate change consultant for Pacific countries, said it was “extremely difficult” to make the public aware of the gravity of climate change.

This was because “people don’t listen” and people complained that there was a disconnect between the scientists and prejudiced knowledge that local communities had.

“When you talk to communities about the problem and give them the solutions and they don’t want to listen because solutions involve considerable social and economic deprivation,” he said.

One way climate change could be minimised was through reduced use of short and long-distance transportation as the Pacific used an enormous amount of air transport for commuting, he said.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed during her United Nations diplomacy mission last week that the government was looking into tweaking the recently announced increase of refugees quota from 1500 from 1000 by 2020 to focus on climate refugees, reports Newshub.

Rahul Bhattarai is a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies student journalist who is a reporter on the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz