There is no doubt that the war Israel and the United States have launched against Iran will have global economic consequences. While it is difficult to know what those consequences will be, it is hard to see them as positive, and they could be very, very negative.

Already we have seen oil prices spike by 8 percent since last week, and by much more since January.

Oil prices reached above US$100 a barrel with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but then gradually started to fall, and by the start of the year had returned to their pre-2022 level of US$60.

Just before the weekend they had risen to US$70 and now they are almost at US$80. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, they could rise much more.

That is on the price front. There could also, unlike in 2022, be problems on the quantity side.

If it continues to be difficult to ship oil out of the Middle East, then shortages of oil might start to emerge. The countries that will do best in such a situation are those with large stockpiles or plenty of bargaining power.

The Pacific Island countries have neither.

Reliant on 80% oil
The Pacific is also vulnerable because of its extreme reliance on oil. According to a 2022 UN report, the Pacific meets 80 percent of its energy requirements through oil.

Even in the electricity sector, renewable energy sources make only a limited contribution.

There has been some growth in renewable energy as an electricity source. According to analysis by Janendra Prasad at UNSW, the share of renewable energy in electricity production in the Pacific has increased from 17 percent in 2017 to 24 percent in 2023. That is still low, and nowhere near what Pacific governments are themselves targeting (in excess of 80 percent by 2030).

The Pacific is also vulnerable because of its lack of domestic oil production and very limited storage capacity. In fact, Tonga suffered fuel shortages last year due to problems with its fuel depot and a stranded fuel vessel.

With drivers now queuing in Australia and the UK to get their petrol before prices rise or petrol rationing begins, it wouldn’t be surprising to see queues develop across the Pacific.

Governments can tell people not to panic, but it may seem like a rational response given the risks of petrol price rises and rationing.

It is important to clarify that PNG is the “odd one out” in the Pacific. PNG will actually likely benefit from the crisis as it is a large exporter of LNG. The government’s tax and dividend take will increase as LNG prices rise.

PNG oil refinery
PNG also has an oil refinery. And this war will also help the prospects for PNG’s much-delayed and still-uncertain future LNG projects by increasing the value to Asia of sourcing its LNG nearer to home than the Middle East.

So far we have focused on petroleum. But there are also the wider ramifications of the war.

It may lead to an uptick in global inflation, and may even push the world towards or even into recession. An oil shock on its own is unlikely to be enough to lead to a recession, but an escalated, widespread Middle East conflict (or possibly a conflict that extends to Turkey and Europe) certainly could.

Again, PNG will benefit from a further increase in the gold price as investors lose faith in the US, and therefore in the US dollar.

But overall, what is bad for the world is bad for the Pacific. Remittances, tourism, fishing licence fees, aid and investment returns would all suffer in the event of a global recession.

There is a possible upside. If Iran capitulates and, with or without regime change, gives in to US demands, then, with sanctions removed, oil production might go up and oil prices down.

Right now, that doesn’t seem like a likely scenario.

Relevant positives
More relevant are the positives that could limit or to some extent offset the downside for the Pacific.

One is that it is still unclear how long this war will go on for. The shorter it is the less worrying the outcomes.

A second is the positive role Australia can play. Although there are questions about Australia’s own limited oil storage capacity, Australia will be under pressure to share whatever oil it is able to import with its Pacific family.

Third, and longer-term, this crisis, especially if it is long-lasting, might make the world more serious about the renewable transition, not so much to avoid dangerous climate change, but to shore up energy security.

Understandably, for the Pacific, which is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts and whose emissions are negligible at the global level, the focus to date has been on climate change adaptation rather than mitigation.

But the sort of crisis currently unfolding should give the Pacific countries and their funders a stronger incentive to close the growing gap between Pacific renewable energy targets and reality — not to reduce the risks of climate change, but rather to reduce Pacific vulnerability to an increasingly shock- and conflict-prone Middle East.

Stephen Howes is director of the Development Policy Centre and professor of economics at the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. Rubayat Chowdhury is a macroeconomist with experience working on monetary policy, growth, and economic development in emerging market economies. He is a research officer at the Development Policy Centre. 

Stephen Howes was recently interviewed on this topic for the ABC’s Pacific Beat programme.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A new documentary film on the devastating “ecocide” happening in West Papua will be screened at a weekend solidarity forum in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau this weekend.

The 90m feature film, Pesta Babi (“The Pig Feast”) — Colonialism In Our Time, produced by award-winning Papuan journalist Victor Mambor and directed by Dandhy Dwi Laksono, tells a story about the impact of the Indonesian government and military on the lives of thousands of Papuans trying to protect their rainforests from destruction.

It also relates the plight of thousands of internal refugees in the Melanesian region.

The peaceful resistance of local communities is revealed in the documentary as they face up to 54,000 Indonesian troops and large corporate entities make big profits at the expense of an ancient culture.

Dorthea Wabiser of the environmental and human rights group Pusaka, will speak on the deforestation and displacement of communities in the south-eastern district of Merauke  where Indonesia is destroying 2.5 million ha of rainforest for palm oil, sugar cane, biodiesel, rice and other crops.

Military force is deployed to silence any dissent from communities.

Pesta Babi (The Pig Feast).                              Trailer: Jubi Media

Solidarity group hosts
The solidarity group West Papua Action Aotearoa with West Papua Action Tāmaki are hosting the two-day public forum on March 7 and 8 with the speakers from West Papua including environmental champions and filmmakers who operate in militarised zones at considerable risk to their personal safety.

Also, a media talanoa featuring Jubi Media founder Victor Mambor and others will be hosted by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub on March 9.

“The forum is an important event with a number of speakers and filmmakers from West Papua telling the hidden stories of the Indonesian occupation of their country,” said organiser Catherine Delahunty.

The climate impact of their destruction was incredibly serious as was the use of the military to enforce an end to traditional life, food sources, and forests, she said in a statement.

“These people are our Pacific neighbours with a devastating story to tell that our government and others across the world have chosen to ignore,” she said.

“They have a right to come here and to be heard despite the media bans in Indonesia and the desire of successive New Zealand governments to ignore structural genocide in our region.

NZ citizen kidnapped
“Only when a NZ citizen was kidnapped by Papuan soldiers did the government show any interest in West Papua, and this quickly faded once he was safely released thanks especially to West Papuan efforts.”

Other speakers at the forum include veteran activist and writer Maire Leadbeater, Green MP Teanau Tuiono, Hawai’an academic Dr Emalani Case, journalist and author Dr David Robie, Dr Arama Rata of Te Kuaka, and PNG academic Dr Nathan Rew.

• Forum Day One (public sessons), Saturday, March 7:  Old Choral Hall, University of Auckland, 7 Symonds St,  9am–4pm.
• World Premiere of “Pesta Babi” (The Pig Feast) documentary with Q&A – The Academy Cinema, Lorne St, CBD (below the Auckland Public Library), March 7, 6-8.30pm.
• Forum Day Two (solidarity development), Sunday, March 8: The Taro Patch, 9 Dunnotar Rd, Papatoetoe.
• Media Talanoa, Monday, March 9: “Kōrero with Victor Mambor: West Papua: Journalism as Resistance” – Whānau Community Centre and Hub, 165 Stoddard Rd, Mt Roskill (Next to Harvey Norman), 6-8pm.
• Further information: Catherine Delahunty, West Papua Action Tāmaki and West Papua Action Aotearoa. Tel: 021 2421967

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a speech at Davos this week that signals there may still be a leader in the West worth following.

“Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he warned.

The Canadian PM was brutally honest about Western conduct in the world but shone a bright light on a better path forward.

At a time when the US has pivoted to a smash-and-grab deployment of hard power that now extends to its closest allies, Carney stepped up.

The speech wasn’t a rhetorical tour de force; it was better than that: it was a declaration by the leader of a major, middle ranked Western power that the snivelling compliance, the fawning and the keep-your-head-down approach that has typified the collective West’s response to Trumpism is at a strategic dead end.

We are at a moment which Carney defines as “a rupture in the world order”.

Nostalgia is not a strategy
“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy,” Carney said.

At a time when the US is led by a criminal toddler who can’t stop whining about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize even as he attacks country after country, it is refreshing to encounter a leader who thinks and speaks like a statesman of the first rank.

“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.

“But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” Carney said.

A modern non-aligned movement
Carney did not reference the Non-Aligned Movement formed at the Belgrade Conference in September 1961 but it leapt to my mind when I heard him say:

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Just over a week after the United States announced its withdrawal from the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) — China has stepped in to fill the funding gap.

President Donald Trump included the scientific organisation among a list of others that US government officials were ordered to withdraw from.

In a post to his social media platform Truth Social, Trump called these organisations “contrary to the interests of the United States”.

Others mostly consisted of United Nations bodies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN framework convention on climate change, and UN Oceans.

The US was SPREP’s second-largest financial backer in 2024, responsible for US$190,000, or around 15 percent of overall funding from member states. That number dropped from $200,000 in 2023.

China, a donor but not a member, gave $200,000 in 2024, with an additional $362,817 left aside in case SPREP ever needed it, according to SPREP’s statement for the financial year.

RNZ Pacific asked the Australian and New Zealand governments, both significant SPREP backers themselves, whether they were concerned for SPREP’s future functioning.

NZ not concerned
New Zealand said they were not concerned, nor had they been asked to make up any shortfall, while Australia said they were engaging with SPREP to understand the implications.

A little over a week after Trump’s announcement, the Samoa government-owned Savali newspaper reported a US$200,000 donation to SPREP from China.

“The cheque was handed over in a small ceremony this morning at Vailima by China’s Ambassador to Samoa, Fei Mingxing, to SPREP officer-in-charge and director of legal services and governing bodies, Aumua Clark Peteru,” the report read.

Peteru reportedly said that China’s contributions in December 2023 and September 2024 “provided essential organisation-wide support”.

NZ/China relations expert and Waikato University pro-vice chancellor, Al Gillespie, told RNZ Pacific the saga was “a real pity”.

“We are seeing that countries play favourites and for position. The US leaving SPREP (and so many others) will create voids all over the place that others will fill,” Gillespie said.

“In the Pacific, if NZ and Australia cannot pick up the pace, others, like the PRC [People’s Republic of China] will step in and become the leaders in these areas.”

SPREP has repeatedly denied RNZ Pacific’s requests for comment, saying that the US has not formally given notice to withdraw.

“Silence is commonly the best defence right now for many on a host of international topics,” Gillespie said.

The Samoan government and the Chinese Embassy in New Zealand have been approached for comment.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A former head of the United Nations Development Programme is concerned that US President Donald Trump may set a precedent for other countries.

The President has signed a memorandum ordering the withdrawal of the United States from 66 international organisations.

These include the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Democracy Fund, and nearly 30 other United Nations agencies.

Helen Clark, who was also New Zealand prime minister from 1999 to 2008, said it was a “very troubling” move.

“It is an assault on the international system of cooperation, which has been painstakingly built up over many, many decades,” she said.

Clark was concerned that other countries, which were like-minded with the current US administration, would also withdraw.

New Zealand unlikely
However, Clark did not expect New Zealand to be one of them, as the country had always stood for multilateralism.

“I do think New Zealand, and other like-minded countries, do need to be thinking about their positioning, because to say nothing when there is a comprehensive assault on the international system is not a good position to be in.”

Clark said the Framework Convention on Climate Change was ratified by the United States Senate back in 1992.

“It’s not clear that President Trump can simply withdraw from it, and this will no doubt be litigated within the United States.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Internationally, we are marking the 2025 Human Rights Day at a time of extraordinary retreat from human rights protection across the World. Every human right, every breach of human right and every advance in the protection of human rights must matter equally to us.

The frameworks for human rights protection are well established internationally reflecting the genesis of the international system in the horrors of the Second World War. Social, cultural, political, women’s, indigenous, children’s, and all fundamental human rights are well protected in international laws that have evolved since then.

What may seem like a paralysis in protection of fundamental human rights internationally today does not arise from the absence of protections in international law but from the fractures that characterise the international interstate system in a phase of severe disruption.

The significant advances in protection of human rights internationally arose from a rare postwar geopolitical consensus. That global consensus is dead.

Though the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have their origins in this context, it was not until 2008 that the UN made an explicit resolution on human rights and climate change stating that climate change posed a real and substantial threat to the full enjoyment of human rights.

The Pacific’s human rights story
When the Blue Pacific discusses human rights impacts of climate change, it is shaped by our lived realities. The fundamental right to life in the Pacific is persistently harmed by heat stress.

It is estimated that more than 1200 deaths annually are now attributed to heat stress.

The fundamental right to health is eroded by growing illnesses and diseases arising from rising temperatures. Across the Pacific, well in excess of 1000 deaths are already attributed to climate change related illnesses annually.

The fundamental right to water faces worsening pressures arising from sea water intrusion into ground water, more frequent and prolonged droughts and sewage contamination of water systems as a result of floodings.

The fundamental right to food is persistently harmed by rising surface and ocean temperatures and experienced through failed crops, subsistence farms destroyed by winds and rains, collapse of coral reef systems and with that oceanic foods.

Indigenous people’s rights are similarly persistently harmed as communities across Melanesia undertake climate change induced migration without corresponding transfer of land and other social and cultural rights.

In Tuvalu and atoll states these are likely to lead to more unsettling outcomes as their small and culturally compact communities get thinly dispersed across larger countries such as New Zealand, Australia and Fiji.

Policy choices are needed to respond to worsening human rights protection that are a consequence of climate change.

Climate change and human rights in Pacific education
The right to education is one of foundational rights in international law. Having access to continuous, safe and quality education is the foundation for the enjoyment of this right.

Every time a student misses school because the river that she crosses is flooded or at risk of flooding, that student is denied the full enjoyment of this right. Learning days lost are increasing in Fiji and Melanesia generally. This has lifelong consequences.

The more painful reality is that learning loss is felt so unevenly. It is often people in our poorest households who stay in most flood-prone areas.

In Fiji’s case it is also the case too many I-Taukei settlements/villages are in flood prone areas or in areas more likely to be cut off from school access roads and bridges.

The average day time surface temperatures has increased between 1-3 degrees Celsius across the Pacific within a space of four decades. It may be much higher in schools in urban areas. The safe classroom temperatures for children are 24-26 degrees Celsius at the upper end.

In many schools, classroom temperatures are well above 30C for days on end. The health impacts of prolonged exposure to these temperature are seen through general weaknesses, fainting, headaches and fatigue.

I know of no school that systematically monitors classroom temperatures. I have heard of schools closing down for a day or two when the risks of flooding are high. I have not heard of schools being closed when temperatures are in the mid-30s during periods of high humidity.

Quite shockingly, school building and major repairs are still being carried out in so many schools in exactly the same way as they were done 4-5 decades ago.

The human rights context in education is profoundly gendered. Some of these simply arise from the fact that decisions are made by male leaders.

When reconstruction of several schools in Vanua Levu happened a few years back, boys’ and girls’ hostels needed to be rebuilt following one of the recent cyclones.

The boys’ hostels were reconstructed within a year of two back-to-back cyclones. A 100 percent of the hostel boys were back in school.

The girl’s hostel took another year to be up and running. Only one girl returned to school from those who were resident in hostels during the cyclone year.

A whole generation of girls in the middle to high schools from one of the most disadvantages regions of our country and from some of the most economically disadvantaged communities had simply dropped out of school.

This is a story that repeats itself in so many ways each across the Pacific.

Health, human rights and climate change
As with education, universal access to the sufficient health care constitutes yet another core human right.

One of the worst and least understood aspects of the health and climate change interface in the Pacific is its impacts on mental health.

Following extreme weather events — mental health consequences linger for long periods and most intensely among young children. When winds pick up ever so slightly, many children in schools get frightened — scared — quietly reliving their trauma in full view of teachers who are poorly trained to understand what is happening.

But the health consequences of climate change are far broader. Influenza, dengue including in off seasons, leptospirosis are profoundly impacting our communities. Loss of concentration, performance and worsening learning outcomes are some of these harsh trendlines inside classrooms.

Growing food insecurity
The right to food is a core part of our global human rights architecture. A few years back I had the great pleasure of visiting several schools in Vanua Levu.

I have taught in Fiji’s high schools. I know what I am talking about in a deeply personal way. Nothing prepared me for this.

The numbers/percentages of children who came to schools without lunch was just shocking. Nearly a third of students in one the classes that I visited came to school without lunch that morning.

Rates of stunting rates of children in primary schools (in peri and urban areas) in Fiji can be as high as 10 percent. Stunting rates are much higher in PNG at nearly 50 percent — one of the highest in the world.

Nutritional deprivation leads to delayed cognitive development and over time harms performance. Damage from stunting has life long and intergenerational consequences.
How does climate change feature in this?

The most obvious one is that global warming impacts on our coral reef systems. There is a near collapse of oceanic foods across so many Pacific’s coastal communities.

Equally on the high lands of PNG, delayed precipitation, prolonged rains and droughts harm and overtime irreversibly erode food security. This has widespread consequences.

Food insecurity, gender violence and inter-community conflict are a growing part of the Blue Pacific’s climate story.

Human rights, climate change and cultural and political rights
Nowhere does climate change demonstrate the scale of its destructiveness as in our closest atoll state neighbour.

Tuvalu may be uninhabitable within 4-6 decades even with the adaptation measures underway. It is forced to contemplate the real prospects of near total loss of land. The state has taken protective measures by amending its constitution to preserve sovereignty under any scenario.

Fiji and fellow PIF members have undertaken to respect its sovereignty under any climate scenario.

Compared with PNG, Solomon Islands and Fiji where communities are being relocated, the human rights and climate story of Tuvalu is of a different order altogether. Land rights, cultural rights are rooted and grounded. They do not move when communities are relocated. Relocations are deeply disrespectful of all rights — including cultural, social rights.

It is indeed possible that its whole populations in time may come to be dispersed outside of Tuvalu — in Australia through the Falepili Treaty, in Fiji and in New Zealand. Small and dispersed communities will over time lose their language. They are over time likely to lose many elements of their Tuvaluan identity.

Indigenous and cultural rights are rooted to land and oceans in such deep ways. These rights are recognised as fundamental human rights internationally. Global warming and rising seas treat these rights with callous disregard.

From a 1.5 to 2.8C world
The Blue Pacific has to fight the battle of our lives to return the planet to a 1.5C pathway. No one will do this for us. All our economic forecasting today are based on 1.5C  temperature increase. But the reality is that we are on course for a 2.8C or perhaps even a post 3.0C world.

The consequences of a 3.0C future on human rights of people across the Pacific Islands are unimaginable. For a start, most of the existing infrastructure, school buildings , health centres, data centers are simply not built to withstand 450 km/h winds.

Most of the Pacific’s towns and settlements are coastal. Our entire tourism infrastructure is barely a few metres above sea level. In Melanesia alone there are more than 600 schools that need to be relocated and/or rebuilt.

Several hundred health centres need to be moved. These are estimates based on 1.5C — not twice that. The near total collapse of coastal fisheries is almost a foregone conclusion at anywhere above 2.0C. The silliest thing we can do as a region and as a people is to not prepare for a 3.0C world.

Shaping our story of hope
On the 2025 Human Rights Day, I have reflected on the broad and deep impacts on human rights that directly result from climate change. Ours is a story of hope.

On this day, then let me celebrate the extraordinary leadership shown by Pacific’s students who took the world to court — to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and won.

We owe such an extraordinary gratitude to Fiji’s Vishal Prasad, Cynthia Houniuhi, Solomon Yeo from Solomon Islands and that small group of university students at USP who decided to take on the world. We celebrate Vanuatu’s leadership on all our behalf. Collective action matters.

We make a difference as individuals. We make a difference as a people and as large ocean states. I urge that we deepen our shared understanding of the unfolding universe of elevated human rights vulnerabilities across the Pacific.

Sharing our stories, deepening our understanding of interlinkages between human rights and global warming and beginning honest conversations about things taboo are foundational starting points.

In universities, this may mean adding climate change and human rights legal studies so that graduates leave with a firmer understanding of the world they will enter into.

At medical schools, this means integrating climate change into how human health is studied and researched.

In social science schools, that means advancing our understanding of the rapid evolution of kinship, leadership and culture in traditional Fijian and Pacific societies in a climate changed context.

In communications and journalism programmes, this may mean preparing students to communicate climate crisis with humility, sensitivity and empathy.

As responsible employers, we may be able to lead by ensuring that human rights protection arising from climate change are as mainframed as is possible. Being able to provide the level of sociopsychological support to students and staff bearing the silent scars of slow onset or climate catastrophes would be another great start.

This may include, as well, the simplest of things such as allowing paid compassionate leave for staff to recover from climate change related extreme weather events. In the longer term, the employment laws of Pacific Island states will need to catch up.

I have advised many Pacific island countries to take a hard look at even their school calendar. Few schools measure class room temperatures today.

Our colonial legacy has shaped the school year. We today subject our students to their final examinations when the temperatures inside class rooms are the highest. We today pressure students to prepare for their exams in the months when the chances of catastrophic events are the highest and the chances of illness that are climate change induced are the highest.

A school calendar that is climate informed and that protects human rights in the education context is more likely to commence the school year in September (third term) and conclude exams by August (end of second term).

All of these things are within our gift. We do not need international conferences or even international assistance to do all of these as the changes needed are so simple and so basic.

Building blocs for advancing human rights in a climate changed world:

• First is that individual and communities need to know how their fundamental rights are impacted by climate change. This is a task for all of us — not governments alone.
• Across the region, so many laws and legislative frameworks need to be revised to reflect how climate change and human rights play out. How many hours should an agricultural worker or road construction worker be working when temperatures are higher than 1.5C.
• For employers and service providers, what are the human rights obligations in a climate changed context? What does the waiting room in a health care facility look like in a 1.5C temperature increase and in a 3.0 degree world? They surely cannot be the same.
• National human rights and legal settings need to pay systematic attention to human rights and climate change. This means ensuring that national human rights agencies and courts build up their capabilities to provide the necessary jurisprudence; and our citizens both supported and empowered to approach courts and relevant agencies.
• Internationally, the Pacific Island states including Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) are well advised to ramp up their presence internationally. The next decade must be the decade when the region pushes the boundaries of international law. The decade following that may just be too late.

A Pacific Pre-COP31
I am delighted to have been invited to deliver my remarks so soon after COP30 and well in time for reflections for Pacific’s preparations for Pre-COP31. This climate conference to be held in the Pacific next year will be a great opportunity to bring a consolidated understanding of how fundamental human rights are being harmed by runaway climate change.

Shape this well — together, respectfully and with humility. We can present our agenda for advancing human rights protection in the Pacific powerfully at this Pre-COP.

As a region, we need to begin to win the argument about climate change in the theatres of international public opinion. Lobbyists and interests groups — including much of the global mainstream media — so wedded to petro interests appear to be winning.

We need to tell our stories with clarity and with impact. We need to back that with strategic bargains in all our international relations. A Pre-COP in the Pacific gives us a real chance of doing so.

Thank you for marking the 2025 International Human Rights Day in this way.

This speech about climate change and human rights was delivered by Dr Satyendra Prasad, the climate lead at Abt Global and Fiji’s former ambassador to the United Nations, during the 2025 Human Rights Day on December 10 at the University of Fiji. It is republished from Wansolwara News as part of Asia Pacific Report’s collaboration with the University of the South Pacific Journalism Programme.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific climate leaders are disappointed that Australia has lost the bid to host the United Nations Climate Conference, COP31, in 2026.

Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr said he was “deeply disappointed” by the outcome.

Australia had campaigned for years for the meeting to be held in its country, and it was to happen in conjunction with the Pacific.

The new agreement put forward by Australia’s Climate Minister Chris Bowen is for Bowen to be the COP president of negotiations and for a pre-COP to be hosted in the Pacific, while the main event is in Türkiye.

Bowen told media at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the new proposal would allow Australia to prepare draft text and issue the overarching document of the event, while Türkiye will oversee the operation side of the meeting.

In a statement, Whipps said the region’s ambition and advocacy would not waver.

“A Pacific COP was vital to highlight the critical climate-ocean nexus, the everyday realities of climate impacts, and the serious threats to food security, economies and livelihoods in the Pacific and beyond,” he said.

“Droughts, fires, floods, typhoons, and mudslides are seen and felt by people all around the world with increasing severity and regularity.”

No resolution with Türkiye
Australia and the Pacific had most of the support to host the meeting from parties, but the process meant there was no resolution from the months-long stand-off with Türkiye, the default city of Bonn in Germany would have hosted the COP.

It would also mean a year with no COP president in place.

Bowen said it would have been irresponsible for multilateralism, which was already being challenged.

“We didn’t want that to happen, so hence, it was important to strike an agreement with Turkiye, our competitor,” he said.

“Obviously, it would be great if Australia could have it all. But we can’t have it all. This process works on consensus.”

Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s head of Pacific campaigns Shiva Gounden said not hosting the event is going to make the region’s job, to fight for climate justice, harder.

“When you’re in the region, you can shape a lot of the direction of how the COP looks and how the negotiations happen inside the room, because you can embed it with a lot of the values that is extremely close to the Pacific way of doing things,” he said.

Gounden said the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process had failed the Pacific.

“The UNFCCC process didn’t have a measure or a way to resolve this without it getting this messy right at the end of COP30,” Gounden said.

“If it wasn’t resolved, it would have gone to Bonn, where there wouldn’t be any presidency for a year and that creates a lot of issues for multilateralism and right now multilateralism is under threat.”

No safe ‘overshoot’
Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) international policy lead Sindra Sharma said the decision on the COP31 presidency in no way shifts the global responsibility to deliver on the Paris Agreement.

“There is no safe ‘overshoot’ and every increment of warming is a failure to current and future generations.

“We cannot afford to lose focus. We are in the final hours of COP30 and the outcomes we secure here will set the foundation for COP31.

“We need to stay locked in and ensure this COP delivers the ambition and justice frontline communities deserve.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

“Political and ego manoeuvring” is happening behind the scenes at COP30 in Brazil, as Australia and Türkiye wrestle to host the United Nations climate event next year.

Pacific Islands Forum’s climate adviser Karlos Lee Moresi, who is at the talks in Belém, said the negotiations for who would host COP31 was tough.

“We have Australia with the Pacific very adamant that we need — not only do we want — we need to have a COP in the Pacific. The Türkiye position is they’re not giving up,” Moresi said.

“In all honesty, there’s a bit of political and ego manoeuvring happening behind the scenes.”

Moresi said he thought Türkiye was trying to influence European countries to host the event.

He said as a last resort, and if COP is hosted in Türkiye, the Pacific would want something from Türkiye in response.

“It is not something that we’re really entertaining actively as an option to put forward on the table for now.”

10 years since Paris
COP30 began in Belém on Monday. It has been 10 years since the landmark Paris Agreement was signed.

In his opening speech at the conference, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) executive secretary Simon Stiell said the science is clear, temperatures can be brought back down to 1.5C after any temporary overshoot.

“The emissions curve has been bent downwards because of what was agreed in halls like this, with governments legislating and markets responding, but I’m not sugarcoating it, we have so much more to go.”

The Pacific’s position throughout each COP — “1.5C to stay alive” — has not changed, along with improving access to climate finance.

Unique to this year’s summit is that it is the first time the world’s top court, the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion, can be used as a negotiating tool.

The advisory opinion found failing to protect people from the effects of climate change could violate international law.

“In the context of the phrase ‘everyone has an opinion’, but is it an informed opinion, what we are saying is the ICJ that’s in the highest court is the most informed opinion on this issue.”

Solutions for children
Save the Children New Zealand youth engagement coordinator Vira Paky said she wants to see different parties working together on solutions designed for children and young people.

“We know that children and young people are disproportionately affected by climate change and we want to be on the frontlines to advocate for children and youth voices to be considered.”

Faiesea Ah Chee, one of the youth delegates with Save the Children, wants climate finance to be more accessible for the Pacific.

“I’ve seen how severe weather impact has impacted us and how there’s a lack of funding to help with adaptation and mitigation projects back home in the islands. So, hoping to get a clear vision and understanding of where we can get access to all this climate finance,” Chee, who grew up in Samoa, said.

While world leaders are meeting, rescue workers in Papua New Guinea are scrambling to relocate about 300 people living on unstable earth.

Papua New Guinea’s Wabag MP office spokesperson Geno Muspak said they live around the site of a deadly landslide that flattened houses while people slept inside.

He said it is clear to him the climate crisis is to blame.

“As times are changing the weather is not good for us, especially for people who are living in the remote places,” Muspak said.

The pointy end of COP 30 is still a while off, with the conference running until the end of next week.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Palau’s leader says the world needs to be working toward reducing emissions and “not dropping targets”, in response to New Zealand slashing its methane reduction goals.

Last month, the New Zealand government announced it would cut biogenic methane reduction targets to 14-24 percent below 2017 levels by 2050. The previous target was a reduction of 24-47 percent.

Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr, who is in Brazil for the annual United Nations climate change conference, COP30, said more work needed to go into finding solutions.

“[It’s] unfortunate because we all need to be working toward reduction, not dropping targets,” Whipps said.

“Countries struggle because it’s about making sure that their people have their jobs and maintain their industry. I can see the reason why maybe those targets were dropped, but that means we just need to work harder.”

Whipps said it probably meant the government needed to “step up” and help farmers reduce emissions.

Tuvalu’s climate minister also told RNZ Pacific he was disheartened by the new goal.

New Zealand Climate Minister Simon Watts previously told RNZ Pacific in a statement that methane reduction was limited by technology and the only alternative would have been to cut agriculture production.

“New Zealand has some of the most emissions-efficient farmers in the world, and we export to meet global demand,” Watts said.

“If we cut production to meet targets, we risk shifting production to countries who are not as emissions-efficient, which would add to global warming and have a greater impact on the Pacific.”

NZ ‘doesn’t care about Pacific’ – campaigner
Pacific Islands Climate Action Network campaigner Sindra Sharma said she wanted to know what scientists Watts spoke with.

“I’d like to see what the data is behind New Zealand having the most emissions-efficient farmers. It blows my mind that that is something he would say.”

Sharma said it was especially disappointing given New Zealand was a member of the Pacific Islands Forum.

“I think the signal that sends is extremely harmful. It shows we don’t care about the Pacific.”

Speaking to RNZ Morning Report on Thursday, Watts said the country had not weakened its ambitions on climate change.

“We’ve actually delivered upon what has been asked of us. We’ve submitted our NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) plan for 2035 on time,” he said.

“We’ve done what we believe is possible in the context of our unique circumstances.

“We’ve taken a position around ensuring that we are ambitious with balancing that with economic challenges.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

I sat in a cafe listening to one man telling another how to get more out of his workers — “his team”, kind of the way people talked about workhorses until some of us read Black Beauty and learned that sentient creatures have feelings, both animals and people.

I hope that people will wake up to the need to unite, to pull together. The best decluttering is decolonising.

Maybe Zohran Mamdani’s win is a sign that will herald a new era, an era when socialists can beat “the money men”. Maybe it’s time when we will all wake up to a different possibility. Maybe other values will be recognised.

Virtues do not come from wealth. Capital, capitalism (the key is in the word) is a system of exploitation. It was designed by merchants to make some rich and keep others poor. That’s the system.

Maybe you were not taught that? Of course you were not taught that. Think about it.

I listened to William Dalrymple being interviewed by Jack Tame last Sunday and I thought Jack — who I used to respect a lot before he failed to tackle genocide with Israel’s representative for genocide here in Aotearoa — I thought he, Jack, looked like a possum in the headlights when Dalrymple said that Donald Trump had a precursor in Benjamin Netanyahu and called genocide a genocide.

I like to think Jack and others like him (because I have been like them too) will learn to learn about the history of all people and not view history as an inevitable story of winners and losers.

Winners are exploiters
The winners are exploiters and if we want to save the planet we need a massive game change.

The legacy of colonisation.      Video: TVNZ Q&A

Look at the stats of the land that was taken for expansion and how that expansion was used to justify the extermination of one people to prop another people up. The stats, the real statistics show who was there before, show people lived on the land with the land and the waters.

Capitalism is a system of expansion and exploitation. It flourished for a while on slavery and it flourished for a while on settler colonialism, and it flourished for a while on keeping workers believing the story that they were working for greater glory when their take home pay did not equal the value of their labour.

And there is a difference between guilt and remorse. We can learn from the latter. The former, guilt, stagnates, it leads to defence and offence.

We need to recognise that we don’t need to prop up a dying system that flourishes on making some weak and others stronger.

We need to learn to change — those of us who were wrong can admit it and go forward differently. We can realise that they system was designed to make us fail to see the threads that connect all people. We can wake up now and smell the manure among the roses.

Good shit helps things grow, bad shit is toxic contaminated waste that turns things inwards, makes them gnarly.

Monsters are connected
Unfortunately, those who behave like monsters are connected not just to some of us but all of us.

We need to open our minds and our hearts to a different our value system. We need to decolonise our senses.

If you defend a bad system because right now you are one of the few on a decent pay scale then you are part of the problem. You are the problem. You have been conned. A system is only fair if it is fair for all people.

Learning history gives us a map said Dalrymple (author of The Golden Road which tells the story of how great India was BEFORE it was stolen by Britain — how that country gave the world numbers and so much more) and we need to learn how the map was drawn.

As someone who reads history to write history, I encourage us all to read widely and deeply and to research so that we do not stop thinking and analysing, and so we can tell wrong from right.

Do not be neutral about wrongs as some historians would suggest. It is more than OK to call a wrong a wrong. In fact it is vital. Take a new lens into viewing history, not the one the masters have given you.

We miss seeing the world if we look fail to think about who drew the map, how it was drawn up by men who carved up the world for the Empires intent on creating a golden age by enslaving most of the people to prop up those at the top.

World map’s curling edges
We need to look under the curling edges of the world map drawn up by the exploiter. We need to find find the stories of those who were exploited and who had been part of the creation story of this planet before they were exploited.

Those of us who are descendants of colonisers also — many of us — descend from those who were exploited.

The stories of British workhouses, of the system of exile via banishment, of the theft of women’s rights, of the extreme brutal forms of punishment, the stories of the way the top class pushed down and down on the people of the fields and forests and forced them to serve and serve, these real stories are less well known than the myths.

Myths like the story of King Arthur are better known.

Some myths have been created as a form of propaganda. We need to unpick the stories that were told to keep us stupid, to keep us ignorant.

It is time to stop following the trail of crumbs to Buckingham Palace, or at least to see where the trail really leads — to pedophiles who preyed on others, to predators — not just one but many, to people brilliant at reconstructing themselves — creating some fall guys and some good guys and making some people villains.

That story is a lie that protects and processes dysfunction.

Acting on the truth
Blaming one part of the system prevents us from realising and acting on the truth that the whole system is one of exploitation.

This was always a horror story disguised as a fairy story. One crown could save so many poor. The monarchy is not a family that produced one disfunctional person it is the disfunction.

It promotes the lie that one group of people deserve wealth because they are better than another. What a sick joke.

So let’s back away from societies made by men who want to profit from others and get back to nature.

Let’s look on nature as a sister or mother — a sister or mother you love.

Let’s look at the so called natural disasters like climate change. Look at how they have been created by “noble men” and “noble women” and ignoble ones as well. Disasters that can be averted, prevented.

Who suffers the most in a natural disaster? Not the rich.

How do we heal?
So how do we hope and how do we heal? We see the change. We be the change.

I like listening to intelligent insightful people like Richard D Wolff and Yanis Varoufakis:

Mamdani beats the money men.      Video: Diem TV

Personally, for my mental and physical health I’ve been sea bathing, dipping in the sea. I join a group of mainly women who all have stories, and who plunge into nature for release and relief, to relieve ourselves from the debris. Uniting in nature.

I’ve learned that every day is different. The sea is always changing. No two waves are the same and they all pull in the same direction.

We are part moon, part wave, part light, part darkness. We are the bounty and the beauty.
I do have hope that we will all unite for common good. Sharing on common ground. The word Common is so much better than Capital.

If you are working for the kind of people that are discussing how to get more out of you for less, then unite.

And if you know people who are being exploited in any way at all unite with them not the exploiter. Be the change.

By helping each other we save each other. And that includes helping our friend and exploited lover: Nature.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific nations are at the world’s biggest climate talks making the familiar plea to keep global warming under 1.5C to stay alive, as scientists say the world will now certainly surpass the limit — at least temporarily.

At the opening of the COP30 climate summit in Belém Brazil, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the same call that Pacific nations have for years.

“Let us be clear, the 1.5-degree limit is a red line for humanity. It must be kept within reach and scientists also tell us that this is still possible,” Guterres said.

“If we act now at speed and scale, we can make the overshoot as small, as short and as safe as possible.”

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed in its State of the Climate update that greenhouse gas emissions, which are heating the planet, have risen to a record high, with 2025 being on track to be the second or third warmest year on record.

“It will be virtually impossible to limit global warming to 1.5C in the next few years without temporarily overshooting this target,” WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo said.

“But the science is equally clear that it’s still entirely possible and essential to bring temperatures back down to 1.5C by the end of the century.”

Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) climate justice campaigner India Logan-Riley said the world was now in “deeply unstable territory” with the “very existence” of some Pacific communities now at risk.

COP31 – a Pacific COP?
As this COP starts, there is still uncertainty over where COP31 in 2026 will be hosted.

Both Australia — in conjunction with the Pacific — and Türkiye have bid to host the event.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has written twice to his counterpart looking for a compromise to break the deadlock.

Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr, who is in Belém, said it was important for Australia to be successful in its bid.

“We’re here in Brazil and the Amazon, and the focus next year needs to be a ‘Blue COP’, we need to focus on the oceans,” President Whipps said.

“One of the things I always tell people is, in some countries they only face droughts, or they may face a storm but in the Pacific we suffer from all of them; sea-level rise, storms, droughts, extreme heat.

“Other people, they can’t relate or they think it may be unreal.”

One of those people, US President Donald Trump, told the UN last month the climate crisis is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”.

Palau has a particularly close relationship with the US as one of the Compact of Free Association (COFA) nations. The agreement gives the US military access to Palau, which in return is given financial assistance and for Palauans the right to work in the US.

Whipps said Trump’s comments were unfortunate, and more reason for COP to come to the Pacific.

“I would invite President Trump to come to the Pacific. He should visit Tuvalu, and he should visit Kiribati and Marshall Islands.”

100% renewable Pacific
The Pacific is aiming to be the first region in the world to be completely reliant on renewable energy, a campaign which being led by Whipps.

“Leading the energy transition not only helps the planet by reducing our carbon footprint, but also gives us energy independence, [it] allows us to create jobs locally, and it keeps the money circulating.”

Whipps wants Palau to be running completely off renewable energy by 2032.

Meanwhile, the UN emissions gap report shows the world is on track for 2.3C to 2.5C global warming, if nations stick to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

However, it is an improvement from last year’s report, which predicted 2.6C to 2.8C of warming.

Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) policy advisor Sindra Sharma said the report laid bare the fact that global ambition is nowhere near where it needs to be.

“[The new forecast] still is quite unacceptable for vulnerable communities and small island states in particular, because we’ll feel the effects the fastest with crossing anywhere beyond 1.5 even 1.51 it’s going to have significant implications.

“We’ve always had all the solutions to be able to do so and it’s just a lack of political will. It’s a choice that’s being made consistently and that choice is going to affect every single one on this earth.”

Sharma is hopeful there will be positive outcomes at this year’s COP, despite ongoing geopolitical tensions, which are in part driven by it being hosted close to the Amazon Rainforest — often referred to as the lungs of the earth — and marking 10 years since the Paris Agreement was signed.

It is also the first time Pacific nations have confirmation from the world’s top court that failing to protect people from the effects of climate change could violate international law.

“The advisory opinion that we have now is the first time that we’re going into COP with this kind of legal clarity and the legal clarity is telling us that there’s due diligence in terms of limiting warming to 1.5C.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A feature story authored by a student journalist highlighting the harm plastic pollution poses to human health in Fiji — with risks expected to rise significantly if robust action is not taken soon — has won the Online category of the 2024 Vision Pasifika Media Awards — Cleaner Pacific.

Riya Bhagwan, a Fiji national studying journalism at The University of the South Pacific (USP), won the prize with her Wansolwara story, titled Behind the stalled progress in Fiji’s plastic pollution battle, reports the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).

USP student journalists won two out of four categories in the awards.

Launched during the 7th Pacific Media Summit by Niue’s Prime Minister, Dalton Tagelagi, the awards celebrate excellence in environmental news reporting across the Pacific Island region.

The theme, Cleaner Pacific, spotlights the urgent need to tackle plastic pollution, one of the triple planetary crises threatening the planet, alongside climate change and biodiversity loss.

A story titled Managing Solid Waste in Gizo, a tough task, by award-winning Solomon Islands journalist, Moffat Mamu, of the Solomon Star, and also a USP graduate, won the Print category.

Coverage of the Vatuwaqa Rugby Club’s efforts to keep their community clean, by Fijian journalist Joeli Tikomaimaleya of Fiji TV, picked up the Television category.

Student award winner
The Student Journalism Award was won by Niko Ratumaimuri, of USP, for his story in Wansolwara highlighting a call by young Fijians to keep the country plastic free.

The 2024 Vision Pasifika Media Awards is a partnership facilitated by SPREP with the Australian government through support for Pacific engagement in the INC on plastic pollution and the Pacific Ocean Litter Project (POLP), Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner (OPOC) and the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA).

SPREP Director-General Sefanaia Nawadra said: “We are drowning under a sea of waste! The Pacific media is critical in ensuring we in the Pacific understand the challenges of waste and pollution and share ways we can work towards its effective management.

“Many of our waste issues originate from outside our region and our Pacific media must help our countries advocate for global action on waste especially plastic.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Dr Satyendra Prasad

As Pacific’s leaders and civil society prepare for the United Nations Climate Conference in Brazil (COP30) next week, they also need to keep a line of sight to the subsequent Pacific’s COP31.

As they engage at COP30, they will have in their thoughts the painful and lonely journey ahead in Jamaica and across the Caribbean as they rebuild from Hurricane Melissa.

The Blue Pacific needs to build a well-lit pathway to land Pacific’s priorities at COP30 and COP31. The cross winds are heavy and the landing zone could not be hazier.

At the recent Pacific Islands Forum Meeting in Honiara, Pacific leaders called for accelerating implementation of programmes to respond to climate change. They said that finance and knowhow remained the binding constraints to this.

The Pacific’s leaders were unanimous that the world was failing the Pacific.

Climate-stressed infrastructure
Pacific leaders spoke about their infrastructure deficit. The region today needs well in excess of $500 million annually to maintain infrastructure in the face of rising seas and fiercer storms.

There are more than 1000 primary and secondary schools, dozens of health centres across coastal areas in Solomon Islands, PNG, Vanuatu and Fiji that need to be repaired rehabilitated or relocated.

The region needs an additional $300-500 million annually over a decade to build and climate proof critical infrastructure — airports, wharves, jetties, water and electricity and telecommunications.

The Blue Pacific’s infrastructure distress is a cocktail that poisons its human development progress. This has lethal consequences for our elderly, for children and the most vulnerable.

As a region has fallen short in convincing the international community that the region’s infrastructure distress is quintessentially a climate distress. This must change.

The constant cycle of catastrophe, recovery and debt are on autoplay repeat across the world’s most climate vulnerable region. The heart-braking images coming out of Jamaica and the Caribbean in the wake of Hurricane Melissa makes this same point.

The Blue Pacific as a region attracts a woefully insufficient share of existing climate finance. Less than 1.5 percent of the total climate finances reaches the world’s most climate vulnerable region today. This is unacceptable of course.

Is our planet headed for a 3.0C world?
At COP30, the world will see what the new climate commitments (NDCs) add up to. Our best estimates today suggest that the planet is headed for a 3.0C plus temperature rise. Anything above 1.5C will be catastrophic for the Blue Pacific.

Life across our coral reef systems will simply roast at 3.0C temperature increase. The regions food security will be harmed irreparably. This will have massive consequences for tourism dependent economies. Bleached reefs bleach tourism incomes.

The health consequences arising from climate change are set to worsen rapidly. As will the toll on children who will fall further behind in their learning as schools remain inaccessible for longer periods; or children spend long hours in hotter classrooms.

For Pacific’s women, the toll of runaway temperature increase will be heavy — on their health, on their livelihoods and on their security. It will be too heavy.

A deal for the Pacific at COP30
The world of climate change is becoming transactional. Short termism and deal making have become its norm.

As Pacific leaders, its civil society, its science community and its young engage at COP30 in Brazil, they are reminded that the Blue Pacific needs more than anything else, a settled outlook climate finance that will be available to the region. Finance must be foremostly predictable.

The region should not feel like it is playing a lottery — as is the case today. Tonga must know broadly how much climate finance will be available to it over the next five years and so must Papua New Guinea.

At Bele’m, the world will need to agree to a road map for how the climate financing short fall will be met. This is a must to restore trust in the global process.

The weight on the shoulders of host Brazil is extraordinarily heavy. Brazil is the home of the famous Rio Conference in 1992 where the small island states first succeeded in placing climate change, biodiversity loss on the global agenda.

The Small Islands States grouping is chaired by Palau. President Whipps Jnr will lead the islands to Brazil. He will no doubt remind the host that the world has failed the small states persistently since that moment of great hope at the Rio Conference in 1992.

Pace of climate finance
There are three principal reasons why climate finance must flow to the Pacific at speed.

First, is that most countries in our region have less than a decade to adapt. Farms and family gardens, small businesses, tourist resorts, villages and livelihoods need to adapt now to meet a climate changed world.

Second, if adaptation is pushed into the future because of woefully insufficient finances — the window to adapt will close.

As more sectors of our economy fall beyond rehabilitation, the costs of loss and damage will rise. Time is of the essence. And on top of that loss and damage remain poorly funded. This too must change.

The Pacific needs to do many things concurrently to build its resilience. Everything for the Blue Pacific rests on a decent outcome on financing.

The region needs to make its clearest argument that its share of climate finance must be ring-fenced. That its share of climate finance will remain available to the region even if demand is slow to take shape.

The Pacific’s rightful share of climate finance over the next decade is between 3-5 per cent of the total across all financing windows. This is fundamentally because based the adaptation window is so short in such a uniquely specific way.

This should mean that the Blue Pacific has access to a floor of US$1.5 billion annually through to 2035. This is very doable even if global currents are choppy.

TFFF and Brazil’s leadership
Brazil has already demonstrated that it can forge large financing arrangements through its leadership and creativity. It will launch the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) at COP. PNG’s Prime Minister has played an important role on this. We hope that forested Pacific states will be able to access this new facility to expand their conservation efforts with much higher returns to landowners.

Beyond Bele’m
COP30 in Brazil is an opportunity for the Pacific to begin to frame a larger consensus — well in time for COP31. It is my hope that Australia and Pacific’s leaders will have done enough to secure the hosting rights for COP31.

A ‘circuit-breaker’ COP31
Fiji’s former Deputy Prime Minister Biman Prasad and Australia’s Climate Minister Chris Bowen recently said that COP31 must be “a circuit breaker moment” for the Blue Pacific.

The reversals in our development story arising from the climate chaos have become too burdensome. Repeated recoveries means that every next recovery becomes that much harder.

Ask anyone in Jamaica and Caribbean today and you will hear this same message. Their finance ministers know too well that in no time they will be back at the mercy of international financial institutions to rebuild roads and bridges that have been washed away and water systems that have been destroyed by Hurricane Melissa.

Climate finance by its very nature therefore must involve deep changes to the architecture of international development and finance. The rich world is not yet ready to let go of privilege and power that it wields through an archaic financial international system.

But fundamental reform is a must. Fundamental reform is necessary if small states are to reclaim agency and begin to drive own destinies.

Future proofing our societies
The risks arising from climate change are so multi-faceted that economic, social and political stability cannot no longer be taken for granted.

Conflicts over land lost to rising seas, the strain on education, health and water infrastructure, deepening debt stress take their toll on institutions through which stability is maintained in our societies.

The Blue Pacific needs to work with this elevated risk of fragility and state failure. This reality must shape the Blue Pacific expectations from a Pacific COP.

Building on the excellent work underway in climate ministries in Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, PNG and across the region through the SPC, SPREP, OPOC, I have outlined what the Pacific’s expectations could be from a Pacific COP31.

COP31 must be about transformation and impact. The Blue Pacific’s leaders should seek a consensus that includes both the rich industrial World and large developing countries such as China and India in support of a Pacific Package at COP31.

A Pacific COP 31 package
The core elements of a Pacific package at COP31 are:

1. Ensuring that the Loss and Damage Fund has become fully operational with a pipeline of investment ready projects from across the Blue Pacific.
2. Securing the Pacific Regional Infrastructure Facility (PRIF) as a fully funded and disbursement ready financing facility with a pipeline of investment ready projects.
3. Securing ring-fenced climate finance allocations for the Blue Pacific at the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and across international financial institutions.
4. Securing support for Blue Pacific’s “lighthouse” multi-country (region wide) transformative programs to advance marine and terrestrial biodiversity protection and promote sustainability across the Blue Pacific Ocean.
5. A COP decision that is unambiguous on quality and speed of climate and ocean finance that will be available to small states for the remainder of the decade.
6. Securing sufficient resources that can flow directly to communities and families to rapidly rebuild their resilience following disasters and catastrophes including through insurance and social protection vehicles.
7. Ensuring that knowhow, resources and mechanisms for disaster risk reduction are in place, are fully operational and are sustainable.

An Ocean of Peace for a climate changed world
Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has championed the Blue Pacific as an Ocean of Peace. Its acceptance by Pacific leaders opens up opportunities for the region’s climate diplomacy.

The Pacific’s leaders accept that the Ocean of Peace anchors its stewardship of our marine environment to the highest principles of protection and conservation. An Ocean of Peace super-charges the Pacific’s efforts to take forward transboundary marine research and conservation, end plastic and harmful waste disposal, end harmful fisheries subsidies and decarbonise shipping.

It boosts the Pacific’s efforts to main-frame the ocean-climate nexus into the international climate change frameworks by the time a Pacific COP31 is convened.

A window of hope
Between COP30 and COP31 lies a rare window of hope. The Blue Pacific must leverage this.

Both a Brazilian and an Australian Presidency offer supportive back-to-back opportunities and spaces to take forward the regions desire to project a solid foundation of programs that are necessary to secure its future.

Uniquely the ball may be in the Pacific’s court on how successfully we can harness this rare opening in the international environment.

Dr Satyendra Prasad is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Fiji’s former ambassador to the UN. He is the Climate Lead for About Global. This article was first published by Wansolwara Online and is republished by Asia Pacific Report in partnership with USP Journalism.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Not enough is yet known about the seafloor to decide if deep sea mining can start in the Cook Islands, says an ocean scientist with the government authority in charge of seabed minerals.

The Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority (SBMA) returned last week from a 21-day deep-sea research expedition on board the United States exploration vessel EV Nautilus.

The trip was also funded by the United States and supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The Nautilus in the Cook Islands.             Video: RNZ Pacific

High-resolution imagery and data were collected in a bid to better understand what lives on the seafloor.

SBMA knowledge management officer Dr John Parianos said the findings would guide decisions about seabed mining.

“One day someone will have to make a decision about what to do and it’s clear today we don’t know enough to make a decision,” Parianos said.

On its return, EV Nautilus was confronted by a group of Greenpeace Pacific protest kayakers holding signs that read: “Don’t mine the moana”.

One of the protesters, Louisa Castledine told RNZ Pacific she was conscious both NOAA and Nautilus had a reputation for being “environmentally friendly” but was concerned about research being “weaponised”.

“This research is being used to help enable and guide decision making towards deep-sea mining,” said Castledine, who is the spokesperson for Ocean Ancestors.

“It’s the guise in which this research is being used, and it’s who sent them is the challenge, because who sent them is quite clear on their intent in mining.

In August, the US and the Cook Islands agreed to work closer in the area of seabed minerals to “advance scientific research and the responsible development of seabed mineral resources”.

It came off the back of the Cook Islands signing a five-year agreement with China to cooperate in exploring and researching seabed minerals.

Jocelyn Trainer, a geopolitical analyst with Terra Global Insights, said both countries were interested in the metals to enhance military capabilities but it was not the primary market.

“Volumes are greater for other industries such as the renewable energy sectors and in China there’s huge demand for electric vehicles.”

Trainer said China was ahead of the US in obtaining critical minerals through land mining and mineral processing.

“The US is seeming to choose to start with the supply side of things, get the minerals, and then perhaps work up the knowledge of production and refining.”

Castledine said the region was in the middle of a “geopolitical storm” with the US and China vying for control over deep-sea minerals.

“The USA is building their military might within the Pacific and this is one of those ways in which their reach is moving more into the Pacific and more specifically into Cook Islands waters.”

The Nautilus expedition focused on discovery and the chance to test new deep-sea technology.

Expedition lead Renato Kane said bad weather threatened the mission. However, it cleared up in time to send their ROVs down.

“We’ve had six really successful dives to the sea floor. We’re diving these vehicles down to over 5000 meters depth and the length of these dives were on average, about 30 hours each.

“So we’ve got a lot of high definition video footage for scientific observation on the sea floor.”

Central to the expedition’s success was the testing of a new, ultra-high-resolution camera, the MxD SeaCam, designed for deep-sea research at depths of up to 7000 metres.

The camera combines a compact broadcast camera with custom-built titanium housing to capture 4K images with remarkable clarity.

Dr John Parianos said it was some of the best footage ever recorded several kilometres below the surface.

He said footage would help create the Cook Islands first public catalogue of deep-sea life.

“We’ve benefited from probably the highest resolution images ever taken at these depths in the whole world ever,” he said.

“We need to make a catalogue of the types of life in the Cook Islands seabed so that researchers in the future can reference it. Having such high-quality images means that the catalogue will be even better quality than what exists internationally today.”

Tanga Morris, who was responsible for logging data of both biological and geological discoveries on the expedition, said she was in awe of the various life forms they observed.

“One of the main ones that’s quite dominant down in the deep sea would be deep-sea sponges. We’ve seen them in different species, morphotypes, and sizes, even a whole garden of them.”

Other creatures found were sea stars, anemones, octopi and eels — some of which have possibly never been seen before.

“A few people have asked questions like, ‘have you guys spotted any unidentified species?’ And I think we have come across a few, but then it will take a while to really be sure.

“But if so, what a great milestone it is for us to acknowledge that within our Cook Island waters.”

Dr Antony Vavia, a senior research fellow at Te Puna Vai Marama, the Cook Islands Centre for Research, said the opportunity to go onboard and study deep-sea organisms firsthand was an eye-opening experience.

“Everything that I’ve seen down there has been a bit of a wow for me. [I’m] just amazed at how much life is down there. I was talking to my former supervisor, and he described us as the ‘astronauts of the sea’.”

A notable feature of the EV Nautilus was its 24/7 online livestream.

He said people from around the world tuned in during dives to see the deep-sea discoveries for themselves.

“Being able to show what our ROV — what is ROV, the little Hercules, is seeing in real time, and so having the wholesome thought that we’re not on this exploration journey alone.

“But the fact that we can broadcast it to anyone that is interested and invested in learning more about our deep sea environments is incredibly rewarding, because you feel like you’re pulling in others to be a part of this discovery.”

Dr Vavia who is also a lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, said many schools and university groups had got involved, broadcasting the deep-sea right into their classrooms.

“The opportunities to reach out to schools from a primary school level all the way up to university has been a great opportunity to showcase the science that we’re doing here, and hopefully to inspire younger generations and those that are already in the pursuit of careers in marine science or doing work on board research vessels such as the EV Nautilus.”

The EV Nautilus crew said this element of the voyage helped to answer the public’s questions on what life is found on the seabed.

Crew member and journalist Madison Dapcevich said they hoped their passion inspired future scientists.

“Something that’s really great about Nautilus is we do have this like childlike wonder. We do get really excited about sponges, which most people are not that excited about.

“And then it’s also a great pathway for early career professionals. So we do have an internship and fellowship programme, and those applications are open right now through to the end of the year.”

The teams findings that will form their first public catalogue of deep-sea life will be a foundation for future research and one day, the difficult decisions about what lies beneath.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A feature story authored by a student journalist highlighting the harm plastic pollution poses to human health in Fiji — with risks expected to rise significantly if robust action is not taken soon — has won the Online category of the 2024 Vision Pasifika Media Awards — Cleaner Pacific.

Riya Bhagwan, a Fiji national studying journalism at The University of the South Pacific (USP), won the prize with her Wansolwara story, titled Behind the stalled progress in Fiji’s plastic pollution battle, reports the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).

USP student journalists won two out of four categories in the awards.

Launched during the 7th Pacific Media Summit by Niue’s Prime Minister, Dalton Tagelagi, the awards celebrate excellence in environmental news reporting across the Pacific Island region.

The theme, Cleaner Pacific, spotlights the urgent need to tackle plastic pollution, one of the triple planetary crises threatening the planet, alongside climate change and biodiversity loss.

A story titled Managing Solid Waste in Gizo, a tough task, by award-winning Solomon Islands journalist, Moffat Mamu, of the Solomon Star, and also a USP graduate, won the Print category.

Coverage of the Vatuwaqa Rugby Club’s efforts to keep their community clean, by Fijian journalist Joeli Tikomaimaleya of Fiji TV, picked up the Television category.

Student award winner
The Student Journalism Award was won by Niko Ratumaimuri, of USP, for his story in Wansolwara highlighting a call by young Fijians to keep the country plastic free.

The 2024 Vision Pasifika Media Awards is a partnership facilitated by SPREP with the Australian government through support for Pacific engagement in the INC on plastic pollution and the Pacific Ocean Litter Project (POLP), Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner (OPOC) and the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA).

SPREP Director-General Sefanaia Nawadra said: “We are drowning under a sea of waste! The Pacific media is critical in ensuring we in the Pacific understand the challenges of waste and pollution and share ways we can work towards its effective management.

“Many of our waste issues originate from outside our region and our Pacific media must help our countries advocate for global action on waste especially plastic.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz