By Losirene Lacanivalu of the Cook Islands News
The leading Cook Islands environmental lobby group says that if Donald Trump wins the United States elections — and he seemed to be on target to succeed as results were rolling in tonight — he will push back on climate change negotiations made since he was last in office.
As voters in the US cast their votes on who would be the next president, Trump or US Vice-President Kamala Harris, the question for most Pacific Islands countries is what this will mean for them?
“If Trump wins, it will push back on any progress that has been made in the climate change negotiations since he was last in office,” said Te Ipukarea Society’s Kelvin Passfield.
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“It won’t be good for the Pacific Islands in terms of US support for climate change. We have not heard too much on Kamala Harris’s climate policy, but she would have to be better than Trump.”
The current President Joe Biden and his administration made some efforts to connect with Pacific leaders.
Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies senior lecturer Dr Anna Powles said a potential win for Harris could be the fulfilment of the many “promises” made to the Pacific for climate financing, uplifting economies of the Pacific and bolstering defence security.
Dr Powles said Pacific leaders want Harris to deliver on the Pacific Partnership Strategy, the outcomes of the two Pacific Islands-US summits in 2022 and 2023, and the many diplomatic visits undertaken during President Biden’s presidency.
Diplomatic relationships
The Biden administration recognised Cook Islands and Niue as sovereign and independent states and established diplomatic relationships with them.
The Biden-Harris government had pledged to boost funding to the Green Climate Fund by US$3 billion at COP28 in the United Arab Emirates.
Harris has said in the past that climate change is an existential threat and has also promised to “tackle the climate crisis with bold action, build a clean energy economy, advance environmental justice, and increase resilience to climate disasters”.
Dr Powles said that delivery needed to be the focus.
She said the US Elections would no doubt have an impact on small island nations facing climate change and intensified geopolitics.
Dr Powles said it came as “no surprise” that countries such as New Zealand and Australia had increasingly aligned with the US, as the Biden administration had been leveraging strategic partnerships with Australia, New Zealand, and Japan since 2018.
She said a return to Trump’s leadership could derail ongoing efforts to build security architecture in the Pacific.
Pull back from Pacific
There are also views that Trump would pull back from the Pacific and focus on internal matters, directly impacting his nation.
For Trump, there is no mention of the climate crisis in his platform or Agenda47.
This is in line with the former president’s past actions, such as withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2019, citing “unfair economic burdens” placed on American workers and businesses.
Trump has maintained his position that the climate crisis is “one of the great scams of all time”.
Republished with permission from the Cook Islands News and RNZ Pacific.
