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

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

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

• READ MORE: Other Pacific climate crisis reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• READ MORE: Amnesty International wants NZ visa for climate-hit Pacific islanders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• READ MORE:  ‘We will drill, baby, drill’: Why Trump wants US out of Paris climate deal
• Other Pacific climate change reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• READ MORE: Other Pacific climate crisis reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• READ MORE: COP29: Pacific climate advocates decry outcome as ‘a catastrophic failure’
• Other COP29 climate crisis reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republished from BenarNews with permission.

RNZ Pacific

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.

• READ MORE: COP29: Carbon credit trading scheme criticised as ‘get out of jail free card’
• Fractious COP29 lands $300bn climate finance goal, dashing hopes of the poorest
• Other COP29 climate crisis reports

“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.

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.

• READ MORE: ‘It can be done. It must be done’: IPCC delivers definitive report on climate change, and where to now
• Floods, cyclones, thunderstorms: is climate change to blame for New Zealand’s summer of extreme weather?
• Other climate reports

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.

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.

• READ MORE: ‘Loss and damage’ negotiations dominate COP27’s final day as talks run past deadline
• Other COP27 reports

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. 

For the first time Aotearoa New Zealand has a long-term strategy to deal with the effects of climate change, but the government plan released yesterday contains few answers to some of the toughest questions, including who pays for what.

The 200-page National Adaptation Plan shows the priorities for the next six years and pulls together into one place all government efforts to adapt to the warming globe.

A priority is to embed climate resilience in all government strategies and policies, the plan says.

• READ MORE: Other NZ climate action reports

Despite the draft version asking for public input on the toughest questions of all — for example, who will pay for damage and the cost to adapt to climate change; and how to fairly require people to leave their homes — this final version includes no definitive answers.

Instead, it says the massive Resource Management Act reform under way, and expected sometime next year, will be the primary driver in a number of areas, including managed retreat.

On managed retreat — getting some communities out of harm’s way in places where it is no longer viable to live — the plan says legislation will also be needed.

It reiterates costs will be shared between homeowners, local and central government, insurance companies and banks.

Building away from harm
It also wants to make sure homes and infrastructure are built away from harm.

The plan will see Treasury and Waka Kotahi integrate adapting to climate change into decision making.

Watch Climate Change Minister James Shaw introduce the National Adaptation Plan

It also pledges to:

• work with Māori on climate actions;
• establish an online one-stop-shop for information on adaptation; provide a rolling programme of targeted guidance; and
• start a “programme of work to unlock investment in climate resilience”.

The plan says no two communities will experience climate change in the same way, and the government has pledged that equity will be at its core.

The first three years of the plan are key for both collecting the data and information and starting long-term programmes.

Other major works to address the impact of climate change already under way include reforming the emergency management system and three waters services, and reviewing the future of local government.

What does the government say?
Climate Change Minister James Shaw said the plan was a joined up approach that would support community-based adaptation with national policies and legislation.

The idea was to have tools to prepare for events before they happen rather than after.

He said the National Adaptation Plan brought together more than 120 actions that provided a blueprint for more resilient communities.

“Climate change is a global challenge, but its impacts are felt in our local communities and in our homes,” Shaw said.

“We have already seen what can unfold. Severe weather events that had previously seemed unthinkable, even only a few years ago, are now happening at a pace and intensity we have never experienced before.

“And when they happen, everything from the roads we rely on, to our drains and water supplies, to getting the kids’ to school can be severely disrupted.

“Taking action to prepare for these impacts will make our communities safer, protect our environment, and ensure our towns and cities can continue to support people’s jobs and livelihoods.”

Launching the report, Shaw said that managed retreat was only one of the possibilities for communities.

Accommodating the changes such as by raising houses, or using flood defences like sea walls, were options and the government wanted to ensure communities had “really good information available to them” to make those decisions.

The emphasis was on empowering local communities to determine the risks and map out the options, he said.

Up till now there had been “haphazard approach” with councils doing different things, and the aim was to enable local authorities to do the right thing and make information available to property owners.

“We’ve said that we will not cover every loss and we cannot cover every loss in the country”, he said. “We have to work to support those communities that are going to be really struggling to adapt.”

Managed retreat
Managed retreat is the process of abandoning places where the risk from hazards like flooding or erosion make it no longer viable to live.

It includes RMA reform, which will play a major role. It will require local and central government, hapū, iwi and Māori, and communities to plan together how their areas will adapt

Planning tools will be provided to stop developments in high-risk areas and facilitate retreat where risks are intolerable.

Methods and requirements will be set for councils when planning for natural hazards and considering future climate risks through the National Planning Framework.

Integration between land-use planning and investment decisions will be increased. This means decisions on zoning or other planning mechanisms can occur at the same time as investment and infrastructure planning.

It also includes passing legislation to support managed retreat (this means after a decision has been made that managed retreat is the way to go). The Climate Adaptation Bill sets out the managed retreat framework and will be done by the end of 2023.

Building in the right place
Many communities are in places that face increased likelihood of damage from impacts of climate change. Regulatory frameworks and institutions do not always account for changing risks.

Some plans include:

• RMA reform — This will be a major driver of what gets built where. In 2023, the Natural and Built Environments Act and the Spatial Planning Act are expected to be passed.
• Integrating adaptation into Treasury and Waka Kotahi decisions (both by 2024)
• Set national direction on natural hazard risk management and climate adaptation through the National Planning Framework. It will be released for consultation after the Natural and Built Environments Act is passed.
• Establish an initiative for resilient public housing

What else is in the plan?
The plan is essentially a guide for local authorities, business and individuals to what the government sees as the priorities.

It identifies 43 priority risks that Aotearoa faces from climate change as well as the risk to the telecommunications network.

Some plans include:

• Look at setting a resilience standard for infrastructure
• Finish work on case study exploring “co-investment” of flood resilience
• Flood insurance — Continue work on potential government-run home flood insurance (By the end of 2022, the government will have received advice on flood insurance options and agreed to next steps).
• Prioritising nature-based solutions
• Improving natural hazard information on Land Information Memoranda – Changes to legal requirements for LIMs to help people make better-informed decisions about natural hazard risk when buying a property.
• Designing and developing risk and resilience and climate adaptation information portals — This will give the public natural hazard risk information, and provide access to climate data and information.
• Implementing the National Disaster Resilience Strategy
• Establishing a platform for Māori climate action
• Working with community housing providers to enable effective climate hazard response

On the roles of central and local government
The plan says the government’s role is to set regulation, provide information, invest in infrastructure and the environment.

Local government is at the centre of the response because most hazards happen on a local scale, it says. Local government will maintain its central role in helping communities to understand and respond together.

“Councils have statutory responsibilities to avoid or mitigate natural hazards and to have regard to the effects of climate change when making certain decisions.

“They are also responsible for civil defence and emergency management, and improving community resilience through public education and local planning. ”

Councils also own many assets and infrastructure which are vulnerable to climate change.

The plan gives interim advice to councils advice on making decisions about risks to coastal and other vulnerable areas and under specific warming scenarios of warming using just  released guidance.

This comprehensive guidance will become mandatory by the end of November.

Business and the environment
The plan notes climate change will have a significant impact on native species, ecosystems and the environment.

It will prioritise nature-based solutions, give advice to landowners about how to restore indigenous forests, and help farmers support biodiversity.

The public sector, businesses, property owners and civil society need to take action to reduce the scale of the long-term economic costs, and seize the opportunities of a changing climate, the plan says.

For example, less than 10 percent of firms have assessed risks to their business from a changing climate, and less than 20 percent intend to take action to reduce their risks over the next five years.

What next for the plan?
It is the first in a series of national adaptation plans that will be prepared every six years.

Each will respond to a new national climate change risk assessment. All New Zealanders will be able to have their say on each plan.

Every two years, He Pou a Rangi — Climate Change Commission will report to the Minister of Climate Change on the implementation and effectiveness of the national adaptation plan.

A government climate change board of executives is being established to oversee the emissions reduction plan and national adaptation plan.

It will monitor and report on progress each year, while a group of government ministers will oversee the plan and drive progress.

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

The year is 2040 and Aotearoa New Zealand has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the commitment to keep global heating below 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures.

The economy, society, local government, transport, housing and urban design, energy, land use, food production and water systems have all changed significantly. Fossil fuels have been mostly phased out internationally and import taxes are imposed on high emissions goods.

New Zealand is now a world leader in natural infrastructure, clean hydrogen energy, engineered wood and high quality low emissions food. Despite ongoing challenges, with a prosperous economy, most people think the transition was worth it.

• READ MORE: When climate change and other emergencies threaten where we live, how will we manage our retreat?
• 2020 hindsight: can New Zealand apply the political lessons of covid-19 in the year ahead?

Cities are more pleasant places to live, air and water are cleaner, nature is more abundant.

Following the emissions budgets stipulated by the Zero Carbon Act in late 2021, emissions are now properly priced into all economic decisions. The Emissions Trading Scheme has been reinforced and the price of emitting carbon has stabilised at $300 per tonne, after hitting $75 in 2022 and $200 by 2030.

In 2026, New Zealand signed the International Treaty to Phase out Fossil Fuels, which prohibits fossil fuel extraction, phases out use and requires international cooperation on renewable energy.

Carbon import taxes mean many high emissions commercial activities are no longer economically viable. Trade unions have played a major role in the industrial strategy underpinning the transition to a lower emissions economy.

Māori economy bigger than any other sector
The Māori economy is bigger than any other sector and has benefited from wider international recognition of the long term value of climate and biodiversity work.

New Zealand’s economy is based on productive activity that stays within planetary boundaries – including emissions and pollution of land and water – while respecting social requirements, such as a decent standard of living for all.

Building on their successful response to the covid pandemic, marae-based organisations are prominent as centres of excellence for climate and economic strategy, health and social services, managed retreat from coastal areas and natural infrastructure development.

Public financing was radically rebalanced in the 2020s, delivering more for local government and a greater partnership between councils, government and Māori organisations. This has enabled far better delivery of local services and much more meaningful connections within communities.

Councils and council organisations laid the groundwork for the climate transition, helping address the unequal impacts of climate change on different groups. Councils and mana whenua collectively administer substantial funds for regional development.

Fast, frequent rail

The government’s 2022 Climate Budget provided the massive injection of funds required to redesign our cities, which are now organised around mass transit, safe and segregated routes for cycling and vibrant pedestrian areas. People can access fast, frequent light rail and dedicated busways with low cost fares. Less road space is required for driving, which is more accessible now for those who need it, including disabled people and service vehicles.

People travel between cities primarily via electric rail, managed by a new national passenger rail agency InterCity, which acquired the InterCity regional bus operator in 2023. Through major reforms in 2024, KiwiRail became a dedicated rail freight operator. A new government agency, OnTrack, oversees maintenance and renewal of tracks and rail infrastructure.

Passenger rail services run across the North Island main trunk line on improved electrified tracks at up to 160kph. South Island rail uses hydrogen trains fuelled by locally produced green hydrogen.

Most of the work to upgrade transport, housing and energy infrastructure has been done by a new Ministry of Green Works set up in 2025. This Ministry partners with local hapū and iwi, as well as councils through regional hubs. It is backed by the government’s expanded Green Investment Finance company.

Anger over housing for all
Anger at the divide between property owners and renters culminated in a general rent strike in 2024. The government responded with new financial rules ending the treatment of housing as an asset class. Kāinga Ora, Māori organisations and councils have undertaken a massive public housing construction effort.

Most new housing is now public infrastructure rather than private homes built to store individual wealth. Public ownership has expanded, in particular for entities that provide core services such as transport, energy and water.

In 2024, the government worked with councils to focus plans on quality universal design housing. Since the new building code was adopted in 2025, all new homes have high standards for energy efficiency and accessibility. Higher density apartments line public transport routes in the main centres, with terraced homes in smaller towns. Structural timber has replaced concrete and steel in many construction projects.

Changes to housing, transport and urban design have supported improvements in health, well-being and physical activity. Health improved dramatically after universal basic services were introduced in 2024 to cover free visits to the doctor and dentist as well as free childcare and elderly care.

Energy goes green
Electricity generation has doubled, with a mix of wind, solar and geothermal. Many more energy storage facilities exist, including pumped hydroelectricity. Distributed energy is commonplace. Many councils have helped their communities set up local solar schemes and dozens of towns are completely independent of the national grid.

Green hydrogen is produced at the converted aluminium smelter at Tiwai Point using hydroelectricity. This is used in heavy industry and transport and exported from Southport.

In 2027, after New Zealand blew its first carbon budget, the government replaced MBIE with a new Ministry for Economic Transition. The ministry oversaw the transition to green jobs via a universal job guarantee scheme.

It also supported a dramatic reduction in energy use in all parts of society and the economy. This effort had a greater impact on emissions reduction than the replacement of energy and fuel with renewable sources.

The land heals
In 2025, the government established a Natural Infrastructure Commission. The term “natural infrastructure” emerged in the 2020s as a term to include native forests, wetlands, coastal environments and other ecosystems that store and clean water, protect against drought, flooding and storms, boost biodiversity and absorb carbon.

The commission has supported massive land restoration for carbon sequestration and biodiversity purposes, with an annual budget of NZ$5 billion from emissions revenue. Among other uses, the fund compensates land owners for land use changes that reduce emissions and build up resilience.

Under the new Constitution of Aotearoa adopted in 2040, ownership of the Conservation Estate transferred from Crown ownership to its own status of legal personhood.

International carbon taxes have transformed agriculture. Dairy herds have reduced in size and New Zealand is known for organic, low emissions food and fibre. High quality meat and dairy products, as well as plant-based protein foods, supply international markets.

Seaweed and aquaculture operations have flourished. Along with regenerative agriculture, this transition has reduced pollution and emissions. With native ecosystems regenerated, tōtara and harakeke can now be sustainably harvested for timber and fibre.

In urban and industrial settings water use has dramatically reduced. Every business, home and building stores its own water. Water use is measured and charges are levied for excess water use beyond the needs of the household. No water is ever wasted.

A better place
The country feels steadier than 20 years ago. There is hope for the future in a world that was full of uncertainty after the pandemic stricken early 2020s.

Many government agencies and councils are now seen as useful and relevant, having been equipped with the money to provide housing, social services, environmental restoration and support for economic and land use change.

Moving away from high emissions exports was more successful than anyone expected, but it took strict rules to make it happen. Some in the business sector opposed more government direction and regulation, but it’s widely accepted that relying on market forces would not have delivered a successful transition.

That approach had driven the country to the brink of failure on climate, biodiversity and social cohesion. Having been leaders in milk powder and tourism, the country now leads on natural infrastructure and the future of food, timber and energy.

In 2040, Aotearoa is a better place to be.

Dr Thomas Nash is social entrepreneur in residence, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Australia is accused of using “diplomatic strong-arm tactics” to water down outcomes in Pacific climate negotiations and “buy silence” on climate change, a new report has revealed.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s report, Australia: Pacific Bully and International Outcast, reveals that the Australian government uses “bullying tactics” in regional negotiations on climate change, according to former Pacific Island leaders interviewed as part of the study.

The leaders include former Kiribati President Anote Tong and former Prime Minister of Tuvalu Bikenibeu Paeniu.

• READ MORE: Australia’s ‘dirty’ coal hypocrisy threatens Pacific climate security
• Other COP26 reports

Australia’s aid to the Pacific has been “greenwashed”, with some of the largest and most expensive “climate adaptation” projects having no link to climate change or contributing to increase the climate resilience of Pacific peoples.

The Australian government’s climate position harms its international relations and economy with Australia’s export markets for coal and gas shrinking as major trading partners such as Japan and South Korea commit to net-zero emissions, says the report, published coinciding with the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

The report draws on dozens of interviews with present and former Pacific leaders, Australian diplomats and academics to expose the hardline tactics used by Australia to thwart stronger regional action on climate change and to shift focus away from Australia’s responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The report also uncovers the greenwashing of Australian aid in the Pacific, finding that millions of aid dollars have been given to “climate adaptation” projects that do not have any link to climate change.

Australian standing damaged
Greenpeace Australia Pacific researcher and international relations expert Dr Alex Edney-Browne said the investigation showed Australia’s international standing had been damaged by its climate obstruction.

“Australia has lost its once-respected position in the Pacific and now has a reputation for bullying and strong-arm diplomatic tactics to thwart regional climate action,” she said.

“Pacific Island leaders are some of the world’s strongest climate advocates, but Australia has brazenly tried to buy their silence through aid with strings attached.

“Morrison’s last-minute commitment at COP26 this week to increase regional climate finance by $500 milion, via bilateral agreements, simply won’t cut it. Given the level of greenwashing going on in Australia’s foreign aid to the Pacific as revealed in this report, there is also no guarantee that this money will go where it’s needed to increase the climate resiliency of Pacific peoples,” she said.

“Australia has a history of using bilateral aid as a way of gaining leverage over Pacific island countries. It would be nice to see Australia being a good international citizen and showing support for multilateral climate finance such as the UN’s Green Climate Fund. It refuses to do so.

“Australia must make a serious effort on climate change, which is threatening the very survival of Pacific nations. That means ruling out any new coal or gas projects, ending the billions in subsidies given to the fossil fuel industry and committing to a science-based target to cut emissions by 75 percent this decade to bring it up to speed with our regional neighbours and trading partners.”

Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, said Australia’s climate policy was already hurting the country’s diplomatic standing.

‘Reputation for decency’
“A country’s reputation for decency in these matters does really, really matter… Australia’s credibility in all sorts of ways depends on our being seen to be responsible, good international citizens and Australia is putting that reputation very much at risk on the climate front,” he said.

Anote Tong, former President of Kiribati, said Australia had not acted in the spirit of mutual respect in its dealings with the Pacific on climate change.

“I cannot read into the minds of Australian leaders but it’s always been my hope that we would treat each other with mutual respect, but I’m not sure this has always been the case,” he said.

“But we should be partners in every respect and not when it is convenient to one party but not the other, for example on climate change. We expect Australia to be stepping forward because climate change is very important for us and we’re meant to be part of this family. It had always been my expectation, my hope, that Australia would provide the leadership we desperately need on climate change.”

Dr Matt McDonald, associate professor of International Relations at University of Queensland, refers to Australia’s climate policies as a “perfect storm”, with serious repercussions for the country’s regional and international relations if these policies remain weak by comparison with similar developed countries.

A new study shows rising sea levels in the Marshall Islands will endanger 40 percent of buildings in the capital Majuro, with 96 percent of the city likely to flood frequently.

The study, “Adapting to Rising Sea Levels in Marshall Islands”, is compiled by the Marshall Islands government and the World Bank.

It provides visual projections and adaptation options to assist the Marshalls in tackling rising sea levels and inundation over the next 100 years.

• READ MORE: Other COP26 reports

As COP26 begins in Glasgow, the new visualisations demonstrate the existential threat the Marshall Islands faces.

If existing sea level rise trends continue, the country will confront a series of increasingly costly adaptation choices to protect essential infrastructure.

World Bank senior municipal engineer and the leader of the study, Artessa Saldivar-Sali, said these visual models give insights that have not been available before.

She said these will be critical for decision-makers to understand the potential benefits of adaptation options, such as sea walls, nature-based solutions and land raising.

Saldivar-Sali said the modelling paints a clear picture of the need for significant investment in adaptation for, and by, atoll nations like Marshall Islands.

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

France and French Polynesia have agreed to jointly spend US$60 million to build 17 cyclone shelters across the Tuamotu archipelago.

This was announced on Manihi atoll, where the visiting French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the construction site for a shelter for the atoll’s 600 inhabitants.

Macron stopped on Manihi on his way back to Tahiti after a visit to Hiva Oa.

The French Polynesian President, Edouard Fritch, who is travelling with Macron, told local media that he asked Paris for another loan to cope with problems at the social welfare agency CPS and Air Tahiti Nui.

Wallis delegation to meet Macron in Tahiti
A delegation from Wallis and Futuna is expected to fly to French Polynesia today to meet President Macron.

According to the French Prefect in Wallis, Macron originally had Wallis and Futuna on his itinerary, but called off a visit because of the restrictions linked to the covid-19 pandemic.

Prefect Herve Jonathan told local television Macron had wanted to mark this week’s 60th anniversary of the territory’s current status as a French overseas collectivity.

He said the 14-member delegation would include representatives of the three traditional kingdoms as well as the Catholic archbishop.

In March, Wallis and Futuna had a covid-19 community outbreak, which prompted a strict lockdown.

An immediate immunisation drive inoculated about half the population within two weeks but almost half the population rejected the vaccination offer.

Four hundred people caught the virus and seven died.

Detention for Tahiti man insulting Macron
A man in French Polynesia has been taken into custody for questioning for insulting President Macron shortly after he had arrived at Tahiti’s airport.

Tahiti-infos reports the individual joined demonstrators lined up along the route of the presidential convoy to Tahiti’s hospital.

Demonstrations by anti-nuclear groups and the pro-independence opposition are banned for the duration of the president’s four-day visit.

Reports say the groups distanced themselves from the individual, saying he was not one of their members.

He is due in court and expected to be tried for insulting a person in public authority.

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

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.

• READ MORE: Other Asia Pacific Report articles on climate change policy

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

Six years on from being appointed head of the Pacific Community, Director-General Collin Tukuitonga, a boy born on the tiny Pacific island of Niue, has a voice louder than a schoolboy rugby captain, a voice that serves him well as a Pasifika community leader.

There is little doubt his credentials are impressive for a boy who attended Niue High School and then the University of the South Pacific for foundation years 1 and 2 before arriving in New Zealand from Fiji after the 1987 coup.

Having done his New Zealand Medical Registration exams, he began to excel in the fields he chose.

READ MORE: InfoPacific – the geojournalism project

And excel he did, as his curriculum vitae reads: Director of SPC’s Public Health Division; Chief Executive Officer of the NZ Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs; Associate Professor of Public Health and Head of Pacific and International Health at the University of Auckland; Director of Public Health, NZ Ministry of Health; and Head of Surveillance and Prevention of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases at the World Health Organisation, Switzerland.

He scoffs at the description of a little boy from Niue who has made it big in the Anglo-Saxon, neoliberal, covid-19 world of today.

“I don’t know about making it big, but it has been definitely different and professionally rewarding, and hopefully I’m making a useful contribution to the community,” he laughs heartily in the Pacific way.

But his contribution to all aspects of leadership in medicine and public service cannot be taken lightly.

‘No holds barred’
As Fijian Dr Api Talemaitoga,  a GP in South Auckland and chair of the Pasifika GP Network who is also part of the Health Ministry’s Pasifika response and who worked with Tukuitonga during the H1N1 flu epidemic in 2009, says:

“He is great because he tells you like it is, no holds barred, no sugar coating the truth,” he says of Dr Tukuitonga.

The fact that Dr Tukuitonga spoke out during the current pandemic crisis, calling for a new public health agency is evidence enough of this.

“Sars and H1N1 were epidemics but covid-19 is a much bigger threat. We can be certain there will be viruses like this in the future,” says Dr Tukuitonga.

“Even if this pandemic settles down it doesn’t protect us from something else coming along. So, it’s always going be a risk for communities right around the world.”

However, while he credits establishing Pacific public health services in West Auckland and the poorer Māori communities in Northland (Ngati Hine and the Hokianga) as deeply satisfying, it is his work as director-general of the Pacific Community (SPC) based in Noumea, New Caledonia, that is the cream of his public service to the Pacific.

But it was fraught with difficulties, which he found a surprise.

Fragile unity in the Pacific
“Being appointed Director-General of the Pacific Community (SPC) and running that organisation for six years was a highlight in my life,” he says.

But, “I learnt just how fragile unity is in the Pacific,” he says this with surprise.

“People talk about regionalism in the Pacific all the time and it is something people seek and desire but that actually is very difficult, elusive and fragile.

“Pacific regionalism and Pacific solidarity come with conditions, there is quite a level of distrust that exists and that’s holding back so many developments,” he says.

“But there are some good things going on – their collective approach to climate change has been impressive.

“Leading up to the 2015 Paris Agreement 2015 globally, nobody gave the Pacific a chance, but they banded together, and influenced some big players and got a good outcome in the form of the Paris agreement.

“The voices of the small Pacific Islands were heard at a global level that wasn’t because of chance. It came from the work of the Pacific Island leaders in communicating their concerns about climate change to the rest of the world,” he says.

Trying to push the polluters
“They were trying to push the polluters of the world to take responsibility for some of the things they had done.”

He praised the work done by Pacific leaders at a time when disunity could have been damaging.

“I do think they have done a tremendous job on climate change so that is an illustration of the Island nations having one enemy in common. Otherwise working together on regional issues is not so straight forward.

But it was considered better in the nation of his origins, he says.

“Niue is fortunate in the sense that if you talk about sea-level rise it is not an really an issue for Niue, but in term of the parts of climate change like killing coral and ocean acidification leading to coral bleaching they do affect Niue.

“They also feel the impacts of severe weather events like severe cyclones like everyone else around the Pacific.

“It is fortunate in that it is a high island and they don’t suffer from the sea-level rise parts but clearly they are vulnerable as everyone else with regards to climate change effects,” he says pensively.

Tokelau also at risk
However, Tokelau, as well as Kiribati, is also at a risk, says Dr Talemaitoga,

“When I visited there several years ago, the king tides were really something to see, the effects of climate change were starting to affect them then,” he says.

As for the heavy polluters, Dr Tukuitonga has a slightly different take on those countries,

“The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) is in fact one of the important parts of the Paris agreement.

“That is why we spent quite a lot of time setting up the office in Suva to allow and enable the members to rethink and develop and introduce meaningful contributions

“So, I see it as a very important part of the implementation of the Paris agreement. But, like a lot of things, some countries take it seriously and some don’t,” he says.

And the impacts of covid-19 on climate change?

Covid-19 ‘an aggravation’
“In a sense, covid-19 is an aggravation because it would introduce health risks, limit movement of people and their ability to do things, such as their ability to try to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

“I see covid-19 as an additional challenge for the small islands to face on of top climate change,” he says.

The Pacific environment will also be vulnerable to climate change he believes.

Coupled by pollution and various other practices such as overfishing and over-consumption has had an effect, he says.

“The combination of climate change, pollution, population growth, and the exploitation of the environment is a serious threat to the sustainability of the Pacific environment,” he expounds.

“There is a very strong drive to build more hotels in pristine places around the region because the drive for economic development is relentless and that leads to the destruction of our natural environment, so I do think it is a serious concern,” he says about the proliferation of tourist hotels in the region.

“The Pacific Ocean is increasingly polluted by actually pollution from outside the region but also the sea life is being threatened with overfishing and with ocean acidification as a result of that overfishing.

Pollution getting worse
“It will get worse; it has started already. That’s why the UN sustainable development goals are really important because one of those is dedicated to the protection of the health of the ocean.

“It’s already underway and I think we clearly need to do more within the context of climate change to protect and promote the environment around the region.

The same care should be taken when it comes to wildlife in the region.

“Sustaining wildlife goes hand-in-hand with environmental degradation so whatever we do to promote and protect biodiversity should, in fact, look to protecting the few species of wildlife that we have,” he says.

“Most of the small atoll nations in the world have very limited diversity, except the Pacific Ocean is one of the world’s largest ecosystems with quite a lot of biodiversity, some of which we don’t know about yet,” Dr Tukuitonga says.

“I have always been a fan of ecotourism and for travellers who spend a bit more money than the average person. I have never been a fan of bums on seats tourism and especially to little places. Ecotourism is a very important part of development landscape in the region,” he says.

He for one warned against the complacency that has taken hold in the Pacific with regards to covid-19. As a public health specialist, he notices how lax the testing had become in June and warned against that practice publicly.

Complacency factor
“I would have thought testing should have continued in earnest, without a doubt I think complacency is a factor and we should have done more testing,” he says in a few words.

After being 102 days covid-19 free in New Zealand, he used to be keen on the travel bubble to the covid free islands – but no longer.

“I was a keen promoter of that idea, but I would suggest to them right away not to pursue this. I would say to stop it.

“The problem is we don’t know quite what the spread is like in New Zealand and people could go to the Cooks or Niue integrating the virus there, so even if you test for it before going there’s not a guarantee that people with the virus are travelling to the destination so I would discourage it.”

And he has a passion outside his “norm of life”, a heartfelt one at that too.

“I’m very concerned about the Niue language because it is one of the realm languages that is in dire straits because very few Niueans speak it now and there is a very real chance that it will disappear completely.

“I’m part of a community effort to try to revitalise the language to have the young ones to speak the language.

Good health numbers
“It isn’t so bad around Fiji, Samoa, Tonga because there are good healthy numbers still living in those islands but the Cooks, Niue and Tokelau where the majority population are in New Zealand they don’t speak their first language it’s a real concern.

“I believe that absolutely that it is likely to affect their cultural behaviour because language is such a central and critical part of the culture and so while you can participate in your culture without speaking the language it is not the same as being able to speak the language which allow you to participate more fully,” he says.

“So, remember each generation of Cook Islanders and Niueans born in New Zealand would be further and further away from their culture so it is going to be a challenge to maintain,”

And that is likely to bring its own problems as Tonga found out recently.

“People feel disconnected from their social norms and traditional values, family connections are disturbed and of course that is almost an inevitable consequence that young people in particular would turn to drugs and crime. That is why I see languages as a protective element for our people,” he says with conviction.

He admits to being annoyed at not winning the World Health Organisation (WHO) regional director post for the Western Pacific last year when several Pacific nations showed themselves to be at the whim of foreign currencies.

“Only because I felt I had much to offer the Islands, also the Islands have never had a Pacific person in that leadership role, but life has moved on.”

Now the associate dean Pacific and associate professor at the University of Auckland, Dr Tukuitonga has been seconded to the Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS) one day a week and the service does the covid-19 contact tracing.

“I am happy to come back home and get involved in this. It’s good because it gives me a lot of freedom to explore the things that matter and I’m enjoying it.”

This is the fourth of a series of articles by the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch as part of an environmental project funded by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific initiative.

For 74-year-old Teaga Esekia, a chief from the Tuvalu island of Vaitupu, the ocean is a lifeblood.

“Tuvaluans, they have different types of months, not like January to December,” said the elderly but agile man, who still climbs coconut trees every day.

“They have their seasons according to fish and planting. We tell the time by fish.”

READ MORE: Thousands – young and old – demand government action on climate change

Esekia was sitting at the edge of the lagoon on Tuvalu’s main island, Funafuti, where he had travelled for a medical appointment. As he sat beneath a tree, sheltering in the breeze from the harsh afternoon sun, he told of how that ocean has changed.

“Some of the common fish, they’re very hard to find now in Tuvalu. That’s a problem we’re facing nowadays.”

His people on Vaitupu also sustained themselves by planting pulaka, a type of swamp taro, which are grown in pits.

“I can see most of the pits are now not growing because if you taste the water there, it’s salt. When we were young, these pits were growing very well. Nowadays it’s very hard,” he said.

IPCC Report
The changes seen by Esekia were starkly highlighted last week in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report, which was written by more than 100 scientists and experts – including several from New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific – is based on more than 7000 scientific studies, providing one of the most comprehensive insights into the state of the oceans today.

It concluded that the oceans are heating at such a rate that their chemistry is being altered which, in turn, is threatening seafood supplies, fuelling more extreme cyclones and floods, and posing a profound threat to millions of people who live in low-lying areas.

For the Pacific Islands, it painted a grim picture.

“We already see in the Pacific these impacts,” said Helene Jacot des Combes, a scientist at the University of the South Pacific and adaptation advisor to the Marshall Islands government, who was one of the report’s contributing authors.

“It is true that all the changes in the ocean in terms of temperature, in terms of ocean acidification, will have a very important impact on the marine ecosystems and on the distribution of fish and other marine life,” she said. “We can already see some variation.”

‘Grim picture’
Jens Krüger, the manager for oceans affairs at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, who was not involved with the IPCC report but is on the executive planning group for the UN Decade of Ocean Science, said the conclusions painted a grim picture: the effects would be most keenly felt in the Pacific.

“It really confirms that our ocean is at a breaking point. It’s getting hotter, sea levels are rising, the ocean is becoming more acidic, and of course all of this is happening as our planet heats up,” said Dr Krüger.

“For us in the Pacific, the report also highlights that all these changes, and the rate and the magnitude of the changes which are already being observed, are highest in our region.”

The oceans act as a crucial buffer against global warming, absorbing about a quarter of the carbon dioxide that’s emitted, as well as taking much of the excess heat that’s trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere. But the report says there’s so much that the oceans are becoming hotter and more acidic.

“These positive aspects of the ocean in the climate change is having a side effect in the ocean with the change in the chemistry, and that will have a lot of impact,” said Dr Jacot des Combes.

“For the Pacific, where people depend so much on the ocean, it’s very problematic.”

Ecosystems in disarray
These warming waters are throwing marine ecosystems into disarray, the IPCC said, as habitats wither. The frequency of marine heat waves – which kill fish, sea birds and coral reefs – has doubled since the 1980s, it said, while many fish populations are migrating far from their usual locations – like Vaitupu, in Tuvalu, where Esekia has noticed a decline – as they try to find cooler waters.

Already, Dr Krüger said, this was being keenly felt in the Pacific. This year alone, severe coral bleaching events have whitened reefs in French Polynesia and Guam, and fears have grown about whether they’ll recover as bleaching events become more common.

Heatwaves in the ocean are expected to become 20 to 50 times more frequent this century, depending on how much emissions increase, the report said, with vibrant underwater ecosystems like coral reefs and kelp forest all expected to suffer serious damage.

“Warm water coral reefs, for us in the Pacific, that’s our major ecosystem,” said Dr Krüger. “The report confirms that we are actually creating a world that is incompatible with our way of life.”

In the Pacific, reefs are some of the main sources of food, income and defence. Their fish and plants provide sustenance for locals, and income from fish exports and tourism. They also act as a barrier, dissipating the force of waves as they charge towards vulnerable islands and atolls, especially as sea’s rise, which is another of the report’s conclusions.

Rising seas
As ice sheets and glaciers melt, it said, ocean levels are being pushed up, making extreme flooding that was once rare become annual events.

That is already being seen in places like Kiribati and Marshall Islands, Dr Jacot des Combes said, where inundations were happening with increasing regularity.

Hotter ocean temperatures and rising sea levels also provide fuel for more destructive cyclones, which further imperil the coastal regions and low-lying states of the Pacific.

“We have seen that the number of category four and category five cyclones are increasing in the total number of annual cyclones,” said Dr Jacot des Combes.

While the report said the severity of the threats it outlined could be reduced if nations sharply cut their greenhouse gas emissions, it also pointed out that many countries would need to adapt to many changes that have now become unavoidable.

Dr Krüger said this included most Pacific countries, especially in the northwest Pacific, where sea level rise was already three to four times the global average.

Urgent priority
“We’re definitely not moving fast enough,” said Dr Krüger. “Really, the report concludes by highlighting, you know, that we have this urgency, we have to prioritise, we need to do it now.”

Esekia was sitting at the edge of Funafuti lagoon on the day of the leaders’ retreat of the Pacific Islands Forum in August, where the region’s leaders were meeting to try and thrash out a declaration on climate change.

That agreement was taken to the United Nations in New York last week, where world leaders again met to discuss climate change as a mass of youth-led climate strikes were held around the world, coinciding with the IPCC report’s release.

Most industrialised countries aren’t on track to meet their Paris Agreement targets, let alone the drastic changes called for in last week’s report.

Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine is calling for greater action.

“There is no excuse for large, wealthy and polluting nations not to act,” said Heine at a news conference.

“We are most heavily threatened and impacted and we are least equipped to tackle what are overwhelming challenges as we seek to cope or to respond.”

• This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand

Pasifika people in New Zealand need to take charge against climate change which is already threatening their home islands, an Auckland hui has heard.

Political leaders have been too slow, warned climate experts, community, youth and Pasifika leaders who were joined at the Roskill Climate Restart hui by Minister for Climate Change James Shaw and Mt Roskill Labour MP Michael Wood.

“We have no choice. It’s about my people surviving in this world. My people [in Tuvalu] are already suffering. In terms of food they can’t plant crops now because of the salinity of the soil,” said E Tū union Komiti Pasifika representative Fala Haulangi.

READ MORE: USP journo students return from Solomons climate storytelling project

“Every day our people live in fear and that’s the reality people have to face. So, when we talk about what we will do in the next 10 years, no, let’s talk about today.”

Haulangi said there is a lack of trust in politicians among Pasifika communities but believes in the power of community to tackle climate change.

Pacific climate warrior Brianna Fruean said more attention needs to be placed on the resilience and adaptability of Pasifika people.

“Young people in Tokelau are building keyhole gardens for their villages so their gardening is raised off the ground as a way of adapting to climate change and soil salinisation. I’ve seen so many examples of the resilience humans can bring forward.

“We need more attention on the solutions and how we can look at people who really shouldn’t be as resilient as they are, considering all the obstacles that are given to them, and how they’ve overcome them. If someone in the Pacific can put up a fight against climate change, then anyone in the world can.”

James Shaw agreed, saying it was critical government works with communities when it comes to assessing real life effects of climate change.

“Wellington can’t work that out all by itself. [Risk assessment] is an area where we need to work closely with other communities because they have on the ground knowledge. Communities often have knowledge that has been passed down from generations.

“It’s going to take everything that we’ve got at every single level. It is one of those things that has to involve political change.”

The hui began with a community cycle ride around the newly-opened Te Auaunga (Oakley Creek) walkway led by “local biking heroes” Roskill Bike Kitchen and Global Hope Mission, followed by a free lunch provided by Wise Collective.

• Ayla Miller is studying Journalism through AUTs postgraduate diploma of communications and has an interest in arts, culture, entertainment and environmental news
• This story was first published on Te Waha Nui

Australia looks to have succeeded in watering down language on climate change in the communiqué of today’s Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ summit in Tuvalu.

Small Pacific states sought firm commitments from developed countries to stop global temperatures rising by more than 1.5 degrees this century.

Pacific Islands leaders also wanted a commitment towards an end to the use of coal.

READ MORE: Relocation for ‘sinking islands’ cheaper but ‘we’re staying’, vows Tuvalu PM

But it is understood references to a climate crisis have been removed, and Forum members are instead being asked to “reflect on” the UN Secretary-General’s call to phase out coal.

While fishing at dawn this morning, Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga said the situation would most likely be referred to as a “climate reality”.

Leaders of the Forum’s 18 states and territories are currently in a retreat debating what the final communiqué will be.

It will be tonight before a final version is released.

• This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.
• Disagreement over climate change action at Pacific Islands Forum

Relocation is a cheap option for sinking island countries – but “we are going to stay”, vows Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga, who is this year’s chair of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Sopoaga highlighted this during a press conference held before the main Forum meetings took place.

He said the issue of relocation had been around at the Forum for several years now. However, in spite of climate change, the small island nation is not giving up hope.

READ MORE: NZ’s Jacinda Ardern to tackle climate change conversation in Tuvalu

“We have been trying in Tuvalu at least to build a trust and the conviction that we can still do something, not to give up but to work to do something to save the islands, to save Tuvalu and possibly to save the small islands,” he said.

“Because we believe by relocation that would be fine, but we believe that is going to be a cheap option for those who caused global warming and climate change.

“It would be so easy for them to say to pass a resolution in the United Nations that we resolve to look for money to relocate these guys to somewhere safe, but there is nowhere safe in the world because of climate change.”

His views highlighted the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) that will provide 7 ha of raised flood-free new land.

‘Self-defeating option’
“I think it is a cheap option and it is self-defeating, therefore we in Tuvalu say no,” he said.

“We are going to stay and that in front of us – TCAP – that reclaimed area is a statement by Tuvalu.

“We can save Tuvalu by raising the islands, by building the islands, by reclaiming lands, to protect the islands.”

Sopoaga expressed gratitude at Fiji’s offer to take Tuvalu refugees if the time came for relocation, but he reaffirmed that that stage had not come yet.

It is a view that Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama echped at the Sautalaga meeting, but acknowledged the will of Tuvalu to maintain a foothold on its home.

“Fiji will offer a home to you the people of Tuvalu,” Bainimarama said.

Natural justice
“We have made the same offer to your neighbours in Kiribati. This is obviously not our preferred option or yours, because natural justice demands that you continue to live in a place you call home, the islands you love and the islands of your ancestors.

“In the Fijian spirit of loving and open hearts, we are determined that you not only become refugees in a worst case scenario we will offer you refuge among us so that at the very least you remain close to where you belong.”

He called on the region and the greater world not to forsake the people of Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands.

• Matthew Vari is a PNG Post-Courier journalist covering the Pacific Islands Forum.
• More climate change stories

A group of University of the South Pacific journalism students have returned from a week-long trip to the Solomon Islands covering communities at the forefront of climate change.

Rosalie Nongebatu, Romeka Kumari and Ben Bilua, who are also part of Wansolwara team, were selected to be a part of the project “Adapting to and mitigating effects of climate change and island sea level rise,” funded through the Internews/Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific and Bay of Bengal 2019 media grants.

Wansolwara editor and trip leader Geraldine Panapasa, said it was a very successful and valuable experience for the students.

READ MORE: USP journo students head to Solomons for environmental reporting project

“The students were able to apply their journalism production skills for print, online and broadcast. Part of the field reporting training included mojo (mobile journalism) skills for short news videos,” she said.

“We visited vulnerable communities in the greater Honiara area, spoke to those at the forefront of climate change, those in resilience and adaptation projects, those suffering from the devastating impact of climate change, those in decision-making positions and the future generation.”

The students found that, unlike in Fiji, climate change does not get much exposure in the Solomon Islands. Government agencies usually supply environmental reports to the newspapers rather than journalists doing the reporting themselves.

Communities seldom visited
Because communities seldom get visits by local media or government, the students met many people who wanted to share their stories about shortages of water, depleted fish stocks and other climate change effects.

When the students visited the Lord Howe Settlement in Honiara, they found that the residents, mostly of Polynesian decent, had few food gardens and depended on the sea for their livelihood.

“Sanitation wise, they also use the sea for bathing and other ‘toilet’ business. Proper water supply, health and sanitation are clearly lacking in this community,” Panapasa said.

However, she said that many people have come to see climate change reporting as a money making opportunity and only supply information for payment.

“This, of course, would taint the credibility of their views. Would they really tell us what they’re going through or tell us what we want to hear?” Panapasa said.

Balanced and thorough coverage
However, the group ensured their coverage was both balanced and thorough and spoke to representatives across the community.

“We felt it was important to cover all aspects of the project by speaking to stakeholders – grassroots communities, UN agencies, NGOs & CSOs, government, youth etc.

“We also took into consideration the importance of providing gender balanced views on the issues we intended to cover with climate change, resilience and mitigation.”

USP Journalism coordinator Dr Shailendra Singh thanked the grant sponsors, saying that it had enabled the students to report on pressing issues through a professional experience.

“The USP journalism programme would like to thank the Earth Journalism Network for making this project possible.

“Next we will take a student team to the Cook Islands on a similar assessment.

“We look forward to our continued partnership with EJN to develop both environmental journalism and student journalists in the Pacific.”

Three journalism students from The University of the South Pacific in Suva have been selected to participate in a week-long environmental reporting project in the Solomon Islands.

After a stringent selection process, students Rosalie Nongebatu, Romeka Kumari and Ben Bilua were chosen to be part of the project titled, “Adapting to and mitigating effects of climate change and island sea level rise”, made possible through the Internews/Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific and Bay of Bengal 2019 media grants.

The project involves journalism students conducting climate change reporting in the Cook Islands and the Solomon Islands.

READ MORE: USP wins US$20,000 grant to boost Pacific environmental journalism

Led by Wansolwara editor and USP Journalism staff member Geraldine Panapasa, the team is expected to visit areas in Honiara that are susceptible to the devastating impacts of climate change as well as report on vital efforts undertaken by stakeholders to address climate impacts on vulnerable communities.

Kumari, who is also the sports editor for USP Journalism’s student training newspaper Wansolwara, said climate change was an urgent issue that needed to be addressed at all levels.

“There are many untold stories of the threat and risks of climate changed faced by many Pacific Islanders, including those in the Solomon Islands,” she said.

“The trip is an opportune time to put faces to the stories of climate change and to re-emphasise the reality and gravity of the situation for grassroots people in these vulnerable communities.”

Benefitting aspiring journalists
Second-year journalism student, Epeli Lalagavesi, who will join the environmental reporting team to the Cook Islands later in the year, said the project would benefit aspiring journalists.

“I am excited about the trip to the Cook Islands for two reasons. First, it will enable me to witness, learn and report on climate change injustice as well as the challenges faced by the people of Cook Islands,” he said.

“Secondly, I hope to learn new skills, especially the concept of ‘mojo’ or using mobile journalism tools to disseminate information.”

Boost for environmental reporting
USP Journalism coordinator Dr Shailendra Singh said the grant was a boost for solidifying the foundations of environmental reporting for the future.

He said the Pacific was at the forefront of climate change impacts, on top of various other problems, such as the exploitation of fisheries and forestry resources, plastic pollution and waste disposal and management.

“Environmental issues in the Pacific are under-reported compared to the magnitude of the problems and because of the smallness of the Pacific media industry, journalists are generalists by necessity, with no specific beats such as environmental journalism,” Dr Singh said.

Although USP Journalism lacks resources to offer specific courses in environmental journalism, students report on the environment as part of their assessed news assignments, using the expertise available at other USP faculties as resource material.

Authentic learning
“The $US20k grant from EJN would take authentic learning – the idea of incorporating the classroom with the real world – to another level, with two teams of the best student reporters sent to the Cook Islands and the Solomon Islands to report on community mitigation efforts,” Dr Singh said.

He said the project was geared towards expanding coverage horizontally beyond Fiji, and vertically down to the grassroots level, building future capacity through student journalism.

The trip will take place from June 24 until July 1.

The Pacific Media Centre and Asia Pacific Report have a publishing partnership with the University of the South Pacific journalism programme.

By RNZ Pacific

The UN Secretary General António Guterres has praised Fiji as a strong committed partner in peacekeeping and for taking a leading role in the battle against climate change.

Guterres was speaking after formal talks with Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama today.

Guterres said it needec to be recognised the battle was not being won for the commitments made in Paris to be respected and there needed to be much stronger political will to rescue the planet.

READ MORE: UN Secretary-General tells youth ‘be noisy as possible’ on climate change

There was nowhere better than the Pacific to feel the moral duty to rally the international community, he said.

“The prime minister was telling me in the meeting we just had, that climate change corresponds to the battle of our lives from the point of view of Fiji and the Pacific.

“As secretary-general of the United Nations, I have many battles but I have no doubt to say that as a grandfather this is also the battle of my life.”

Guterres side-stepped a reporter’s question on whether human rights issues were discussed with the Fijian prime minister, saying Fiji’s progress is being discussed during the Universal Periodic Review process at the UN Human Rights Council.

Running out of time
Earlier, Pacific Island leaders asked the UN Secretary-General to tell the world their region was running out of time.

At a meeting yesterday in Fiji, leaders from countries in the Pacific Islands Forum said climate change was the single greatest threat to their region.

In a statement, the leaders welcomed Guterres to witness the everyday reality of climate change and to drive momentum in the lead up to his Climate Action Summit in September.

“After meeting today, we will return to our island homes. Some of us will find our villages inundated by waves and our homes and public infrastructure wrecked by cyclones. Our coral reefs are dying, our food is disappearing, and we fear for the safety of our loved ones, who are being injured and even killed by some of the most ferocious of cyclones and other extreme weather events ever witnessed in our region,” the statement said.

“Let us together seize the opportunity of the UNSG’s Climate Action Summit to make the changes we need to reverse climate change.”

They said all countries attending the summit must agree to reduce global emissions, and to mitigation and adaption support for countries that needed it.

Without agreement, the leaders said people of the Pacific would continue to lose their homes, their ways of life and their livelihoods.

Message to polluters
“To the major polluters – our today in the Pacific is undoubtedly your tomorrow.

“Sea level rise in Tuvalu is sea level rise in New York, though one might go under before the other.”

António Guterres acknowledged the message from Pacific leaders, saying he stood with them in calling for climate action.

“The Pacific has a unique moral authority to speak out. It is time for the world to listen,” he said.

This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

• More climate change stories
• Stefan Armbruster of SBS News reports

New Zealand has the opportunity to be a climate change “innovation lab” for the rest of the world, says an international planner and former United States political candidate.

Sue Minter is keynote speaker at the NZ Planning Institute’s annual conference next month.

Her experience as a planner in post-apartheid South Africa, state transportation leader, disaster recovery chief, and US Democratic candidate is expected to be a major drawcard for the conference’s 600 delegates, says the NZPI in a media release.

READ MORE: NZ Planning Institute conference

As Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Transportation in 2015, Minter also co-chaired a sub-committee on President Obama’s White House Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience – a national initiative that brought together leaders throughout the US to build national and local strategies for climate resilience.

“New Zealand is a respected global leader that can be an innovation lab for the rest of the world in addressing climate change in a forward-thinking way,” she said.

“Climate change is a global threat that knows no boundaries. Lessons learned in one country must be shared and applied elsewhere. This includes best practices around resilient design, disaster recovery and adaptation.”

Developing strong, resilient communities is “critical”, Minter said.

‘Destructive power’
“I have learnt first-hand about the destructive power of climate change and of innovative efforts to adapt. I have seen strong communities survive and even thrive in the aftermath of disaster, while communities that were poorly prepared or had weak leadership struggled to recover.

“A resilient community is one that comes together and bounces back after disruption rather than falling apart. A resilient community has the capacity to re-imagine itself, adapt, and chart a new course for the future that may look different than the path it was on previously.

“A resilient community foresees and prepares for future disruption in order to lessen the impacts of climate and extreme weather.”

Minter’s comments correspond with new research into climate change and environmental degradation. Rising seas, increasing temperatures and extreme weather events are said to be reaching unprecedented levels.

A recent study led by prominent New Zealand climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger demonstrated the summer of 2017/18 was the warmest in 150 years.

Temperatures were, on average, two degrees higher – leading to significant ice loss in South Island glaciers, the death of farmed salmon in the Marlborough Sounds, and unusually early grape harvests in the Marlborough wine region.

Dr Salinger’s study suggests that such conditions may be typical of the average New Zealand summer climate by 2100.

Environmental risks
Environmental risks also continue to dominate the results of the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Report. Extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation/adaptation and natural disasters were ranked as the top three risks for 2019 in terms of likelihood.

Survey respondents were increasingly worried about “environmental policy failure” – particularly in relation to climate change.

The challenge for local authorities and citizens is adapting to these advancements, says Minter.

“Identifying risk factors and ameliorating them where possible pays big dividends. Preparing social and governmental structures, and ensuring that climate change is always considered in any community and building design is key.”

NZPI’s Weaving the Strands conference will be held in Napier from April 2-5.

Other notable keynote speakers include Environment Minister David Parker, Minister for Māori Development and Local Government and Associate Minister for the Environment Nanaia Mahuta, Waikato University demography professor Tahu Kukutai, renowned designer and sustainability champion David Trubridge, and Director-General of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme Kosi Latu.

Minister Parker will discuss the government’s resource management programme, and provide updates on specific aspects of the urban work programme, quality intensification, the Housing and Urban Development Authority and versatile soils.

Minister Mahuta will address the rapid decline of New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity.

The conference is expected to attract industry leaders, iwi, resource managers, urban designers, scientists, environmental advocates and local and central government representatives.

By Karl Mathiesen and Natalie Sauer in Incheon

Only the remaking of the human world in a generation can now prevent serious, far reaching and once-avoidable climate change impacts, according to the global scientific community.

In a major report released yesterday, the UN’s climate science body found limiting warming to 1.5C, compared to 2C, would spare a vast sweep of people and life on earth from devastating impacts.

To hold warming to this limit, the scientists said unequivocally that carbon pollution must fall to “net zero” in around three decades: a huge and immediate transformation, for which governments have shown little inclination so far.

READ MORE: Global warming of 1.5C summary for policymakers

“The next few years are probably the most important in our history,” said Debra Roberts, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) research into the impacts of warming.

The report from the IPCC is a compilation of existing scientific knowledge, distilled into a 33-page summary presented to governments. If and how policymakers respond to it will decide the future of vulnerable communities around the world.

“I have no doubt that historians will look back at these findings as one of the defining moments in the course of human affairs,” the lead climate negotiator for small island states Amjad Abdulla said. “I urge all civilised nations to take responsibility for it by dramatically increasing our efforts to cut the emissions responsible for the crisis.”

What happens in the next few months will impact ON the future of the Paris Agreement and the global climate

Abdulla is from the Maldives. It is estimated that half a billion people in countries like his rely on coral ecosystems for food and tourism. The difference between 1.5C and 2C is the difference between losing 70-90 percent of coral by 2100 and reefs disappearing completely, the report found.

Small island states
Small island states were part of a coalition that forced the Paris Agreement to consider both a 1.5C and 2C target. Monday’s report is a response to that dual goal. Science had not clearly defined what would happen at each mark, nor what measures would be necessary to stay at 1.5C.

As the report was finalised, the UN Secretary-General’s special representative on sustainable energy Rachel Kyte praised those governments. “They had the sense of urgency and moral clarity,” she said, adding that they knew “the lives that would hang in the balance between 2[C] and 1.5[C]”.

37 things you need to know about 1.5C global warming

At 2C, stresses on water supplies and agricultural land, as well as increased exposure to extreme heat and floods, will increase, risking poverty for hundreds of millions, the authors said.

Thousands of plant and animal species would see their liveable habitat cut by more than half. Tropical storms will dump more rain from the Philippines to the Caribbean.

“Everybody heard of what happened to Dominica last year,” Ruenna Hayes, a delegate to the IPCC from St Kitts and Nevis, told Climate Home News. “I cannot describe the level of absolute alarm that this caused not only me personally, but everybody I know.”

Around 65 people died when Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean island in September 2017, destroying much of it.

In laying out what needs to be done, the report described a transformed world that will have to be built before babies born today are middle aged. In that world 70-85 percent of electricity will be produced by renewables.

More nuclear power
There will be more nuclear power than today. Gas, burned with carbon capture technology, will still decline steeply to supply just supply 8 percent of power. Coal plants will be no more. Electric cars will dominate and 35-65 percent of all transport will be low or no-emissions.

To pay for this transformation, the world will have invested almost a trillion dollars a year, every year to 2050.

Our relationship to land will be transformed. To stabilise the climate, governments will have deployed vast programmes for sucking carbon from the air. That will include protecting forests and planting new ones.

It may also include growing fuel to be burned, captured and buried beneath the earth. Farms will be the new oil fields. Food production will be squeezed. Profoundly difficult choices will be made between feeding the world and fuelling it.

The report is clear that this world avoids risks compared to one that warms to 2C, but swerves judgement on the likelihood of bringing it into being. That will be for governments, citizens and businesses, not scientists, to decide.

During the next 12 months, two meetings will be held at which governments will be asked to confront the challenge in this report: this year’s UN climate talks in Poland and at a special summit held by UN secretary general Antonio Guterres in September 2019.

The report’s authors were non-committal about the prospects. Jim Skea, a co-chair at the IPCC, said: “Limiting warming to 1.5C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes.”

‘Monumental goal’
Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a former lead author of the IPCC, said: “If this report doesn’t convince each and every nation that their prosperity and security requires making transformational scientific, technological, political, social and economic changes to reach this monumental goal of staving off some of the worst climate change impacts, then I don’t know what will.”

The scientist have offered a clear prescription: the only way to avoid breaching the 1.5C limit is for humanity to cut its CO2 emissions by 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 and reach “net-zero” by around 2050.

But global emissions are currently increasing, not falling.

The EU, one of the most climate progressive of all major economies, aims for a cut of around 30 percent by 2030 compared to its own 2010 pollution and 77-94 percent by 2050. It is currently reviewing both targets and says this report will inform the decisions.

If the EU sets a carbon neutral goal for 2050 it will join a growing group of governments seemingly in line with a mid-century end to carbon – including California (2045), Sweden (2045), UK (2050 target under consideration) and New Zealand (2050).

But a fundamental tenet of climate politics is that expectations on nations are defined by their development. If the richest, most progressive economies on earth set the bar at 2045-2050, where will China, India and Latin America end up? If the EU aims for 2050, the report concludes that Africa will need to have the same goal.

Some of the tools needed are available, they just need scaling up. Renewable deployment would need to be six times faster than it is today, said Adnan Z Amin, the director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency. That was “technically feasible and economically attractive”, he added.

Innovation, social change
Other aspects of the challenge require innovation and social change.

But just when the world needs to go faster, the political headwinds in some nations are growing. Brazil, home to the world’s largest rainforest, looks increasingly likely to elect the climate sceptic Jair Bolsonaro as president.

The world’s second-largest emitter – the US – immediately distanced itself from the report, issuing a statement that said its approval of the summary “should not be understood as US endorsement of all of the findings and key messages”.

It said it still it intended to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

The summary was adopted by all governments at a closed-door meeting between officials and scientists in Incheon, South Korea that finished on Saturday. The US sought and was granted various changes to the text. Sources said the interventions mostly helped to refine the report. But they also tracked key US interests – for example, a mention of nuclear energy was included.

Sources told CHN that Saudi Arabia fought hard to amend a passage that said investment in fossil fuel extraction would need to fall by 60 percent between 2015 and 2050. The clause does not appear in the final summary.

But still, according to three sources, the country has lodged a disclaimer with the report, which will not be made public for months. One delegate said it rejected “a very long list of paragraphs in the underlying report and the [summary]”.

Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

• COP 24 in Katowice, Poland

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s challenge to United Nations members last month to reflect on the impact climate change is having on the Pacific has been welcomed by social justice advocates.

But they would like to see the rhetoric matched by even stronger action to give the world its best chance of coping with climate change.

The Prime Minister spoke of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands as the Pacific’s most at risk nations which have contributed least to global emissions but are facing the full force of their consequences.

“Our actions in the wake of this global challenge remains optional, But the impact of inaction does not,” she told the UN.

“If my Pacific neighbours do not have the option of opting out of the effects of climate change, why should we be able to opt out of taking action to stop it?”

Ardern said that in the South Pacific there was a reality of rising sea levels, increases in extreme weather events and negative impacts on water supply and agriculture.

“For those who live in the South Pacific, the impacts of climate change are not academic, or even arguable.

‘Grinding reality’
“We can talk all we like about the science and what it means … but there is a grinding reality in hearing someone from a Pacific island talk about where the sea was when they were a child, and potential loss of their entire village as an adult.”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s speech at the United Nations. Video: UN

Although New Zealand represents less than 0.2 percent of global emissions, the Prime Minister then vowed to “play our part” in continuing to decrease in emissions and support the global climate change battle.

Goals have been set of:

• 100 percent renewable energy generation by 2035;
• zero emissions by 2050;
• a halt on offshore oil and gas exploration permits;
• a green infrastructure fund to encourage innovation, and
• a 10-year plan to plan one billion trees.

“These plans are unashamedly ambitious [but] the threat climate change poses demands it.”

Real commitment
A few days before her address to the UN in New York, the Prime Minister announced a $100 million increase to its global climate finance – an increase from $200 million, which will be spread in $25 million blocks over four years.

The Prime Minister said the additional funding would focus on practical action, helping Pacific states to build resilience and adapt to climate change.

“The focus of this financial support is on creating new areas of growth and opportunity for Pacific communities. We want to support our Pacific neighbours to make transition to a low carbon economy without hurting their existing economic base.”

The Prime Minister said she planned to bring greater attention to the impact of climate change alongside Pacific leaders and ensure global awareness of the cost of inaction.

“We recognise our neighbours in the Pacific region are uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

“We have a responsibility to care for the environment in which we live, but the challenge of climate change requires us to look beyond our domestic boarders.”

Communications accounts manager for the Ministry for the Environment, Karen Goldsworthy, says two thirds of the global climate funding would be going towards Pacific nations to help adapt to their warming climate.

“We recognise that New Zealand alone cannot fix the challenge climate change poses to our region: it is a global problem that requires a global solution.

“New Zealand will continue to work actively to contribute to an effective global response to climate change through which Pacific resilience improves … and lose work more widely to encourage ambition through our leadership.”

A global model
Renewable energy and climate change consultant Dr Bob Lloyd, a former director of energy studies at Otago University, says New Zealand’s commitment to climate change is a show of leadership to the rest of the world of what is achievable.

Lloyd called New Zealand a small-scale model of what can be achieved on a global scale, however this issue is one which cannot be resolved by one small nation.

“It’s up to countries like Australia, New Zealand, Europe and unfortunately the US to bring their emissions down.

“The big dilemma at the moment is that a lot of the poor countries want to increase their emissions and they’re not going to consider bringing their emissions down unless the big countries bring their emissions down first.

“The other onus is on the rich countries to actually help the poor countries come down, which means they need to transfer money to them to achieve their goals.”

Lloyd said the extra $100 million from New Zealand towards the global climate change fund was a good effort but would not have a huge impact. To achieve emissions reductions, developing countries would need trillions of dollars.

“The amounts of money which are needed just for the Pacific region – which are tiny compared to the rest of the world – are enormous,” he said.

Putting over ideas
Although Lloyd, a self-proclaimed pessimist, thinks the world would not be able to outrun climate change he does not want to “hamper people from trying”.

“Without some countries trying, then the poorer countries and other countries will give up completely, so I think it’s extremely good that Jacinda is putting these ideas over and they’re trying to help as much as possible.

“She’s doing a remarkable effort. It’s also enthusing government. I was pleasantly surprised at how much influence Jacinda and the Labour Party is having on both New Zealand and internationally.”

Dr Kevin Clements, the foundation professor of Otago University’s National Centre for Peace  and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) and current director of the Japan-based Toda Peace Institute, says the Prime Minister’s plea for climate change awareness has powerful emotional and normative appeal, but at the end of the day it is a numbers game.

“Every little bit helps. New Zealand’s voice on its own isn’t going to change Donald Trump or the behaviours of the major US multinational companies, but on the other hand it’s all part of creating a normative order which acknowledges the centrality of climate change and what it’s doing to us.”

Dr Clements says the Pacific is feeling the brunt of global emissions and has little capacity to do anything about it. However, the moral weight of New Zealand and the South Pacific can help larger nations become more proactive.

The Prime Minister advocating for climate change issues humanises her, says Dr Clements, but she needs to be stronger to be seen as a serious political leader on these issues.

“She really needs to make sure she’s coupling her soft power appeal and her own personal charisma with some hard-headed arguments and evidence based research so she is seen both as a wonderful human being but equally as a hard-headed negotiator on the issues that matter.”

Maxine Jacobs is a postgraduate student journalist on the Asia Pacific Journalism Studies course at AUT University.

The gap between policy and people was a key topic at the last week’s Climate Change and Conflict in the Pacific workshop when experts from Western and Pacific countries gathered to share stories and studies.

The Auckland event – hosted by the Toda Peace Institute and the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago – sought to bridge the gap by connecting Western, scientific policies with the deeply spiritual customs and beliefs of Pacific life.

Workshop facilitator and Toda director Professor Kevin Clements, who is also founding director of NCPACS, says it is an opportunity to understand Pacific perspectives and respond creatively to an existential threat.

READ MORE: The climate change workshop and policy papers

“We in New Zealand and Australia have a deep responsibility to listen,” he says.

“If we don’t understand the Pacific way of thinking, we will begin to undermine relationships in unanticipated, unconscious ways.”

Relationships were a major theme throughout the workshop, with many participants affirming the unique relationship Pacific people have with their land.

Vanua philosophy
Fijian teacher Rosiana Kushila Lagi says the traditional Fiji philosophy of Vanua reflects the absolute interconnectedness between people, land and sea.

Working in Tuvalu, Lagi is engaging communities to use the principals of Vanua to mitigate the destruction caused by climate change. The behaviour of animals, plants and the weather are all useful indicators of environmental change and can be used to prepare for extreme events.

However, she says many communities are losing this traditional knowledge when they are physically separated from the land, something that also contributes to a loss of identity.

Tuvaluan minister Tafue Lusama shared a similar perspective, stressing the importance of traditional knowledge in the Tuvalu way of life.

“Indigenous knowledge is the way we focus our relationship to everything, to the land, to the sea, to each other and to all living things,” he says.

“It is our way to communicate with the clouds, birds, plants, animals; this includes communicating with the spirits of our ancestors.”

With an average height of 2m above sea level, Tuvalu is particularly vulnerable to the affects of climate change. Rising sea levels not only threaten property but also food and water sources.

Storm surges
Storm surges can sweep inland, flooding deep-rooted crops like taro and coconut and contaminating fresh water reservoirs.

Yet for many communities who have already relocated, the struggles of adjusting to a new home can be just as harsh.

Discussed at the workshop were the people from the diminishing Carteret Islands, who in recent years have been relocated to land donated by the Catholic Church on mainland Bougainville.

Managed by grassroots organisation Tulele Peisa, the initiative sees every family given a hectare of land on which they can live and grow crops for trade and sustenance.

While the relocation project has been considered successful, there are concerns for the Cataract Islanders living in a region recovering from a bloody civil war over the Panguna copper mine. Even today, violence is widespread.

According to Volker Boege, a peace and conflict academic who has worked extensively in the region, there have been reports of attacks on the Carteret Islanders and their property.

He says this has a lot to do with tribal competition over limited land, much of which is customary.

Establishing relationships
“Before the relocation, Tulele Peisa put in a lot of work establishing relationships with the Bougainville community and engaging in discussions with the chiefs. Nevertheless, land is scarce,” Boege says.

“The policies don’t take into account the complexities between the indigenous people and the fighting that can occur between tribes when relocated.”

Despite predictions that the Carteret Islands will be completely underwater by 2040, he says some of the people are choosing to return home from Bougainville.

For these people giving up home, identity and starting a new life in a foreign land is simply too much to ask.

While other Pacific communities are on the list for relocation, there was a commitment among the workshop participants to factor in the values, customs and wishes of both the relocating and the receiving communities into any polices moving forward.

Future collaboration between the many organisations present would also allow an inclusive, dynamic approach where information could be easily shared from the top down and vice versa, connecting the grassroots to the researchers and policy makers.

Ideal outcome
For Paulo Baleinakorodawa, this was an ideal outcome of the workshop. As operations manager of Fiji-based NGO Transcend Oceania, he has worked extensively with relocated and relocating communities, resolving conflict and trying to make the process as peaceful as possible.

However, he says that plans for cross-organisation collaboration have stalled prior to the workshop.

“I was hoping that coming in here I would find an opportunity to actually push that into more actions,” he says.

“It’s been wonderful because there has been a lot of information, a lot of networking and commitment from people that are actually doing something about climate change.”

“And so now Toda, Transcend Oceania, the Pacific Conference of Churches, and the Pacific Centre for Peace Building are going to be partnering together to continue that project.”

While climate change and its affects will only continue to worsen, the workshop was an encouraging show of unity and compassion that will be needed if further suffering in Pacific is to be prevented.

Most importantly, it opened an essential conversation in which the many different voices could be heard.

“This is only the beginning of that conversation,” says Baleinakorodawa.

Michael Andrew is a student journalist on the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies (Journalism) reporting on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course at AUT University.

• Lost at sea – the race against time to save the Carteret Islands from climate change

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.

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.

INTERVIEW: Lars Ursin of 2°C talks to Elisabeth Holland

The Pacific Islands are already struggling with the consequences of climate change. But they are not giving in. Instead, they have become a force to be reckoned with in international climate diplomacy. How did that happen?

2°C: How are the Pacific Islands experiencing the effects of global warming today?

Elisabeth Holland: Tropical cyclone Winston’s 40-metre waves, that is one thing. The devastating peak winds of both tropical cyclones Pam and Winston, and the destructive storm surges they brought. The fact that recovery after Winston amounted to 30 percent of Fiji’s GDP. Also in Fiji, 676 of around 1800 villages have already said they need to move. Not just from storm surges, but from repeated inundation due to rising sea level or changing storm patterns. Or coastal erosion generated by storm surges and rising sea levels.

In Fiji, we now recommend that all newly married couples move to higher ground. This is because it is tradition to build new housing for newlyweds to give the communities a head start on the inevitable transition. The transitions needs to happen in a methodical, well-organised way with community buy-in.

What areas of the Pacific Islands are most vulnerable to further climate change?

That would be Tuvalu, Kiribati, The Republic of the Marshall Islands and Tokelau. What they have in common, is a maximum elevation of 3 metres. They are along with the Maldives part of what is called the Coalition of Low Lying Atoll Nations on Climate Change.

What is the outlook for the people living on these islands?

The new government of New Zealand is considering setting new immigration policy for their Pacific Island neighbours. Fiji is the only country which has said it would receive climate displaced refugees from the Pacific. Three countries, The Federated States of Micronesia, The Marshall Islands and Palau are part of the Compact of Free Association with the United States and eligible for US passports giving them the right to live, work and study in the USA. Migration, already underway, is to Hawai’i where the provision of some basic services can discriminate against people from these areas.

What practical measures are taken to prevent escalating damage?

There are several issues. Most important is what communities need today to be vibrant and healthy: Fresh water. So, for example, we have provided water tanks and reticulated water systems for more than 12.000 people, funded by the EU. Many of the Pacific Island countries have just begun to access the Green Climate Fund. Tuvalu residents refuse to leave, they say they will adapt. Their funds will be focused on coastal stabilisation, such as sea walls. Marshall Islands are considering which islands to sacrifice to protect the remaining islands. Tokelau has just gotten green climate funding. They are making similar decisions.

‘Migration with dignity’
And Kiribati, under president Anote Tong, a vocal climate spokesperson, has advocated “migration with dignity”. He is focused on ensuring that his population is as well-educated as possible, while at same time taking adaptative measures. Tokelau, by the way, claims to be the first 100 percent renewable energy country, under a project funded by New Zealand.

At the Paris negotiations, you were ringside when the Pacific Islands announced an the High Ambition Coalition with the US and EU, that eventually paved the way for the Paris Agreement. Can you explain what happened?

First, when the High Ambition Coaltion was made public on Tuesday of the second week of negotiations, it was actually forged – in secrecy – during the Cartagena-dialogue earlier in the year. That strategy came about as a result of having learned the lessons of the failed Copenhagen negotiations when no developing country partners were part of the coalition.

That all changed in Paris. First of all, we were better prepared. We had worked with the French Embassy in preparing for the Paris COP. We had worked with the Fijian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Pacific leaders to draft the Suva declaration on Climate Change. The Pacific leaders drafted more than 10 declarations in the lead up to Paris. And still, we were plagued with self-doubt. I remember I met the Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Dame Meg Taylor, on the airport on the way to Paris. She said: “I am afraid we haven’t done our strategic homework”. My reply was “I hope you are wrong”. And in the end, it took a lot of patience and persistence, and the determination of Pacific leaders.

In the Paris COP, I was a delegate for the Solomon Islands. My job was to make sure they had the best science available. So on Monday of the second week, during the high-level negotiations, I sat all night doing calculations for 1.5°C. And the results were upsetting, because it showed that we had less than 10 years before the 1.5 C goal was unattainable. Our press conference on the 1.5°C target was held at the same time as the Minister Tony deBrum’s announcement of the High Ambition Coalition.

However, in addition to representing the Solomon Islands, I was also informing the rest of the Pacific delegations. Also, a lot of my former students were now delegates – 20 in total – both for the Solomon Islands, but also with various other states. In addition, twice a year, I am invited by the secretariat of the ACP – a group of 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific states – to present the science to the ACP ambassadors in Brussels.

So, when I was approached by Pendo Maro, the climate coordinator for the EU ACP secretariat, we marched across the Paris campus, I knew we had 79 countries in my pocket. By the end of Wednesday, 100 countries had signed onto the High Ambition Coation.

Imagine: After all the drafting had been done in Paris, Tony deBrum walked into the room, flanked by the EU and US lead climate negotiators, and they were given a standing ovation. That is the level of support they enjoyed. Because each of the Pacific countries had done their best in pulling in their respective coalitions. And I had no idea what I was doing at the time. I Just knew that when I was invited by the ACP to present the science, I had to do the best I could to deliver the message as clearly as I could.

This time around, all were committed to stand together. There were no breakaways.
Generally, in diplomatic negotiations like this, big countries like China or India will try to divide one Pacific Island off. But this time around, all were committed to stand together, to stand with the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). There were no breakaways. We had the leadership of Fiji in the Subsidiary Body for Implementation. Three vocal spokespersons in addition. Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga of Tuvalu. Minister deBrum of the Marshall Islands. President Anote Tong of Kiribati. Because they were most vulnerable countries, the rest of the Pacific let them carry the torch and word out to the rest of the world. But every other Pacific country was behind them, doing their negotiations, backing the high points.

What role have the nations of the South Pacific played since?

In Morocco, Fiji was given the COP23 presidency, and there have been a number of accomplishments under that presidency. One is the Indigenous Peoples’ Platform. A second one was the Gender Action Plan. And, finally, the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. But in addition to all of this, oceans are now being included in the climate negotiations.

What do you mean by that?

If you look in the text of the Paris Agreement, the word “oceans” is named only once. And yet, we all know how important oceans are in the global climate system. Therefore, we have worked to ensure that there is an Ocean Pathway, to make sure the ocean is featured more prominently in the negotiations to come. Diplomacy is never fast, but because Fiji was also president of the UN in 2017, and we had the UN Oceans Conference in 2017, this was a unique opportunity.

This is of course important to the island states of the South Pacific, whose very livelihood depends on the ocean. But it is also a point of confluence with Norway’s positions. Norway has oceans and climate as a priority as well.

And finally, the COP presidency will be handed over to Poland at COP24 in Katowice. However, Poland has asked Fiji to play a role going forwards, to help see the Talanoa facilitative dialogue through.

Speaking of which: Can you briefly explain the Talanoa dialogue and what it is meant to achieve?

There is a great description of it at the COP23 website. But essentially it is this: When people in a Fijian community want to come to a resolution, they convene a meeting. That meeting is called a Talanoa. Everybody comes as equal partners, respected, and in anticipation of being heard. It is done in a circle, generally kava is served to honour everybody. All participants’ views and perspectives are put on the table. And together, participants weave the cloth of the way forward.

This is an idealised description, of course. But it comes from the principle that we are all in the same canoe. And it is the Talanoa that will lay the foundation for the Paris rulebook, and the process called the global stock take. That is a key part in the five-year review process: Taking stock of emissions and comparing them to the temperature targets. And then, based on that, deciding on commitments and the way forward.

But can you actually produce results through that type of process?

Remember, Fiji is a country of less than 850,000 people. And yet, it is by way of the principles of participating in Talanoa that they achieved their role as both president of the UN and COP-president at the same time. So, does that mean that they have a better long term strategic focus?

In the year before, in 2016, Fiji also won an Olympic gold for rugby. Rugby is a strategic game. But so is Pacific diplomacy. Because it always puts the collective first. It is a way of thinking – not about one, but about all.

Is it also about shaking up the rules of the diplomacy game, to allow countries to approach the negotiations in new ways?

The Pacific Islands rank among the very top of disaster prone countries. But they also rank with the highest happiness indices.

Absolutely. Because they know they can trust one another. There is an interesting contrast: The Pacific Islands rank among the very top of disaster prone countries, because of tropical cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis. But they also rank with the highest happiness indices. And it is not because we are rich. And definitely not because we see ourselves as victims.

Going forward from Paris, what are the greatest obstacles facing the negotiations?

The unravelling of the commitment to high ambition. That is the biggest obstacle.

How can that be overcome?

By leading by example. Whether it is us as individuals, companies, cities or nations, the principle to begin with is leading by example. When the Copenhagen negotiations fell apart, Tony deBrum walked out, and he was wearing a flowered shirt. So the press could immediately identify him as being a Pacific Islander. A reporter asked him: “Minister deBrum, are you here to save your island?” to which he responded: “No, I’m here to save the world”.

That is the thinking we need. That we as small Pacific islands can become champions, not just for ourselves, but for the planet. And that we can achieve that through leading by example. And this is also why we through generations have set aside marine protected areas. It is part of our tradition. We are truly ocean stewards.

What role has scientists such as yourself played in the actual climate negotiations up until now?

Science without strategy, without key countries committed to it, and without good legal thinking, gets you nowhere. No matter how compelling.

The science come into the negotiations in in a couple of different ways. One is through the IPCC. That is a completely separate process, and not formally connected to UNFCCC. But the UNFCCC was formulated to include science perspectives. And it does so through the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice, or SBSTA.

But science without strategy, without key countries committed to it, and without good legal thinking, gets you nowhere. No matter how compelling. That part is hard for scientists to swallow. Because diplomatic negotiations are more about relationships than they are about science.

Leading up to Paris, we had something called the Structured Expert Dialogue, and the 2013-2015 Review. The 2013-2015 Review was a compelling report. That was where they asked the scientific community to take a look at the IPCC and all the available evidence to provide guidance on things like long term temperature goals. Like 1.5°C or 2°C warming. That we did, and in the intersessional between Lima and Paris, we got 1.5°C into the formal text of the Research and Systematic Observation report. And that then became the platform by which we could push through the Structured Expert Dialogue (SED) and into the Paris Agreement. You can’t just ask for goals like that in a plenary session during negotiations, you need to work it into the other framework first.

However, the Saudis – and others – blocked the SED 2013-2015 Review report. By the end of the first week, we had no formal consensus that could have informed the Paris negotiations. But we had to close the two subsidiary bodies, SBSTA and SBI – the Subsidiary body for Implementation – to go to the second week, the high-level negotiations.

And it was not until Saturday night that first week that Amena Yauvoli, Fiji, gavelled the Structured Expert Dialogue. With that gavelling, there was a formal legal obligation for science to inform the negotiations. The text of the Paris agreement calls for for a global stocktake to be informed by “the best available science”.

So in the end science prevailed, but only because of good diplomacy and skilful negotiations. And that is something a lot of scientists find difficult to come to terms with. Which is understandable. After all, many of us were attracted to science to begin with because we are attracted to a world defined by black and white rather than grey. However, diplomacy is an exploration of the grey.

How can climate scientists contribute constructively in shaping climate policy in the future?

First, ensure the integrity of science and scientific processes. Second, participate fully in the IPCC processes. Third, make sure that the science can be “translated” and communicated so others can use it for evidence-based decision making.

And finally, understand that the science-policy interface requires time. And is challenging. And requires a lot of dialogue. That may sometimes be frustrating to scientists.

INTERVIEW FACT FILE:
Name: Elisabeth Holland
Position: Professor, University of the South Pacific, Fiji
Why: Holland is a renowned climate scientist. She has been a central figure in the international climate negotiations and has been a visiting scholar at the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research this year.

This article has been republished from the Norwegian ezine 2°C with permission.

Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness climate project postgraduate student team Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom have just spent five days on the northern Fiji volcanic island of Rabi.

As Ikimotu, himself a Rabi Islander, reports: “The island’s inhabitants are the Banabans, who were forcibly relocated to Rabi in 1945 due to the destruction of their island from phosphate mining. The people kept the four villages of Banaba and brought them with them to Rabi – Buakonikai, Tabwewa, Tabiang and Uma.”

Here are some of the images from Ikimotu and Tom’s visit to the island.

• Life on Fiji’s Rabi Island
• Rabi Island video

Life on Rabi

1 of 8

By David Robie at Te Papa

A recent Andy Marlette cartoon published by the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon, depicted a bathtub-looking Noah’s Ark with a couple of stony-faced elephants on board with a sodden sign declaring “Climate change is a hoax”.

The other animals on board floating to safety were muttering among themselves: “The elephants won’t admit that these 100-year events are happening once a month …”

At the other end of the globe in Wellington this week for the second Pacific Ocean Climate Conference at Te Papa Museum, I encountered a fatalistic message from a Tongan taxi driver counting down the hours before the tail-end of Tropical Cyclone Gita struck the New Zealand capital after wreaking a trail of devastation in Samoa, Tonga and Fiji.

He had it all worked out: “We don’t need climate conferences,” he said. “Just trust in God and we’ll survive.”

However, a key takeaway message from the three-day conference was just how urgent action is needed by global policymakers, especially for the frontline states in the Pacific – Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, where none of the sprawling atolls that make up those countries are higher than 2m above sea level.

Many of the predictions in assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are being revised as being too cautious or are already exceeded.

The hosting Victoria University of Wellington’s Antarctic Research Centre director Professor Tim Naish, for example, says the sea level rise from the ice sheet from the frozen continent may be double the earlier estimates and could by rise by 2m by 2100.

Bleak news for the Pacific at least. Glaciologist Dr Naish is working on a project to improve estimates of sea level rise in New Zealand and the Pacific.

New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister James Shaw warned that scientists may need to create a new Category 6 for cyclones as the effects of a warming planet made them more frequent and worse.

Cyclone Winston, a Category 5 cyclone, was an example of such extreme weather – it was the strongest cyclone on record and lashed the Pacific in early 2016, killing 44 people in Fiji.

More Pacific research needed
Another critical takeaway message was the vital need for “more Pacific research, by the Pacific and for the Pacific”, as expressed by 2007 Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient Professor Elisabeth Holland, director of the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD).

Many of the global models drawn from average statistics are not too helpful for the specifics in the Pacific where climate change is already a daily reality.

Dr Holland was a keynote speaker on the final day. Describing herself as a “climate accountant” making sense of the critical numbers and statistics, she said it was vital that indigenous Pacific knowledge was being partnered with the scientists to develop strategies especially tailored for the “frontline region”.

“Local research in the region is of utmost importance, leading to informed development choices and is the best way forward as it creates a direct connection between the research and the communities once it is implemented” she says.

“Our Big Ocean States are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and remote research does not suffice, calling for the creation of leaders and experts locally through joint Pacific-led research.”

Scientists, researchers and postgraduate students were at Te Papa in force among the 240 delegates or so at the conference.

Deputy director Dr Morgan Wairiu was among them, speaking on “Engaging Pacific Islands on SRM Geoengineering Research”.

Environmental education and engagement
USP is one of only two regional universities in the world – the other is in the Caribbean. Its PaCE-SD is a centre for excellence in environmental education and engagement, and a global climate change research leader, especially with its focus on the Pacific region and island countries.

The university has 12 member countries with campuses or centres in each.

Local researchers are highly motivated and passionate about studies dealing with the effects of the changes occurring in their environment first hand.

The conference speakers included some the leading and innovative global climate science thinkers and advocates, such as Dr Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University.

He is the author of several revealing books on the subject, including The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening our Planet, Destroying our Politics, and Driving us Crazy, and The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars, who spoke about “Dire predictions” in a keynote.

“There are droughts, wildfires and floods that are occurring now that are without any precedent in the historical record and where we can now use modelling simulations, climate models,” he says.

“You can run two parallel simulations. You can run a simulation where the carbon dioxide levels are left at pre-industrial levels, and a parallel simulation where you increase those levels in response to the burning of fossil fuels. And you can look at how often a particular event happened.”

Artificial leaf strategy
Perhaps the most innovative ideas speaker over the three days was Dr Daniel Nocera, the Patterson Rockwood professor of energy at Harvard University, with his groundbreaking research on renewable energy, especially the solar fuels process of photosynthesis – a process of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight.

He developed the artificial leaf from this theory, a project named by Time magazine as Innovation of the Year for 2011. Since then he has elaborated this invention with a partner in India to develop a production pilot deploying a complete artificial photosynthetic cycle.

He argues that it is developing countries that may play a more crucial role in harnessing renewable energy discoveries because the massive vested interest infrastuctures built around fossil fuels in Western countries hamper rapid progress.

Many speakers gave an indigenous perspective on climate change, arguing that a holistic approach was needed, not just focusing on the science and political solutions.

Independent researcher Aroha Te Pareake Mead gave an inspiring message about “Indigenous peoples and our knowledge – we’re a total package” and the Mataatua Declaration on the Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples 1993 and what has been achieved since.

The Mana Wahine panel – Associate professor Leonie Pihama, Dr Naomi Simmonds and Assistant Professor Huhana Smith – gave an inspirational sharing on “transforming lives through research”.

Legal challenges
Law graduate Sarah Thompson spoke about her legal challenge last year to the previous National-led New Zealand government over the emissions target, and although she eventually lost the High Court case for a judicial review, she opened the door to future climate change lawsuits that may prove more successful.

However, former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, Victoria University’s Law Faculty distinguished fellow, was far more cautious, saying that there was better chance of persuading politicians and trying to develop climate change policy through the courts.

He also warned that countries, New Zealand included, would be ignoring an impeding climate change governance upheaval “at their peril”.

Dr D. Kapua Sproat, acting director of Ka Huli Ao Centre for Excellence in Native Hawai’ian Law and director of the Environmental Law clinic at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, said Native Hawai’ians could invoke indigenous rights to environmental self-determination.

Julian Aguon of Guam, founder of boutique Blue Ocean Law, said it was a challenge to confront deep-sea mining negotiators and corporate lawyers in “wild west” style cases in the Pacific.

Papua New Guinea’s Northern Governor and tribal chief Gary Juffa gave three compelling talks – none of them originally in the programme – on corruption and the barriers it poses for climate action and protecting his country’s forests.

But he also pointed out that more media, climate change frontline activists such as the Climate Warriors, and West Papuan advocates – “where horrendous climate and cultural abuses are happening” – needed to be included in such a conference.

Core themes
In the concluding panel, the joint Victoria University and SPREP organisers, led by Professor James Renwick and “spiritual leader” Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pacific) Luamanuvao Winnie Laban, pulled together these core themes for going forward for the next conference in two years “somewhere in the Pacific”:

• Urgency of action
• Pacific on the frontline of climate change
• Multiple voices, and legitimacy of Pacific voices
• New, more and better capacity-building in the Pacific
• Action on all fronts – top down and bottom up
• Need more effective laws
• Transformative change is needed

• Paradise lost – ‘Anote’s Ark’ shows Kiribati on the brink – Mail & Guardian
• Juffa blasts PNG resources ‘sell out’ but tells of Managalas hope
• Underestimate climate change political upheaval ‘at peril’, warns former PM
• Climate minister: New cyclone category may be needed

French President Emmanuel Macron has delivered a rallying cry to world leaders that more must be done to fight climate change.

But he told the global One Planet Summit in Paris that they were currently “losing the battle”.

The summit is promoting greater worldwide investment in clean energy, reports Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler.

From Suva, The Fiji Times reports that of the various commitments on climate finance made at COP23 in Bonn, Germany, last month, only a small proportion will be finding its way into supporting climate adaptation or resilience.

Better green funding needed

Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama made this statement while speaking at the Paris summit, reports Alisi Vucago.

“The data on this is clear. For many donors, this is simply regarded as development assistance. And for private sector investors, the absence of an immediate and apparent economic return on their investment means that funding climate adaptation or resilience efforts are rarely pursued,” said the COP23 co-president.

“The leaders on this panel are fully aware of the need to make substantial investments in our infrastructure to protect against the danger of climate change.”

Bainimarama said Fiji was focused on rebuilding and strengthening our infrastructure in a climate resilient way, with blended finance from institutions like the Green Climate Fund and multilateral development banks to supplement the Fijian government’s own capital investments.

“And we are developing insurance products for the Pacific region which are currently not available for climate-related events, which could be replicated beyond the region,” he said.

• Paris summit delivers bold climate change commitments

The Paris Climate Agreement must be implemented swiftly as backing away will expose people to more risks, Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has told world leaders.

Representing Pacific Island countries, Bainimarama, President of the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP23) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), pleaded for collective action from world leaders to tackle climate change after taking up the position of president from Morocco in Germany yesterday.

The future of life on earth depends on everyone’s choices – everyone must act on climate change, he said, when opening the Climate Planet in Bonn City.

“Our world is in distress from extreme weather events caused by climate change as destructive hurricanes, fires, floods, droughts, melting ice, and changes to agriculture which threaten food security.

“Thus, the need for urgency is obvious.

“All over the world, vast numbers of people are suffering – bewildered by the forces ranged against them.

“Our job as leaders is to respond to that suffering with all means available.

‘We must not fail our people’
“This includes our capacity to work together to identify opportunities in the transition we must make.

“We must not fail our people.

“That means using the next two weeks and the year ahead to do everything we can to make the Paris Agreement work and to advance ambition and support for climate action before 2020,” Bainimarama said.

Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) reports Bainimarama also called for climate negotiations to agree to limiting global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“By aiming for 1.5 degrees, we are setting ourselves a serious challenge.

“But it provides us with a mission. It engages our capacity for ingenuity, for organisation and sheer hard work.

Bainimarama also announced the launch of an ocean pathway to ensure the ocean is an integral part of the UNFCCC process by 2020, the Vanuatu Daily Post reports.

‘Drua’, a Fijian ocean going canoe in the foyer of the world climate conference serves as a powerful symbol of resilience and unity during the meeting.

It also signifies the resilience of the ancient culture of the Pacific in the face of adverse impacts of climate change.

Climate talks in Bonn continue until November 17.

Anita Roberts is a reporter with the Vanuatu Daily Post. She is among ten journalists from the Pacific invited by the German Foreign Affairs Ministry to COP23 as part of a competition reflecting the importance of this year’s COP to small Pacific Island countries.

• More climate change stories

Loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves. The observable effects of climate change on the environment are well documented and continue to make headlines.

But climate change also carries serious and fatal risks to human health.

“Under climate change conditions, the health and safety of humans are as vulnerable, eventually if not immediately,” the World Health Organisation (WHO) notes.

With rates of Type 2 diabetes and obesity among the highest levels in the world, the health of Pacific island communities in the face of climate change is grim.

In its 2015 report ‘Human health and climate change in Pacific island countries’ the WHO’s Western Pacific Region notes:

“The Pacific will experience some of the earliest and most severe impacts of climate change.

“These effects will include detrimental impacts on various aspects of human health and development.”

This is due to the fact climate change is regarded as a “health risk multiplier”. Put in simpler terms, climate change acts as a trigger and amplifier of pre-existing health risks.

For the Pacific, these include vector-borne (mosquito and tick), waterborne and foodborne diseases, injuries and deaths as a result of extreme weather events, and compromised food security and malnutrition.

‘Highest priority’
These health risks are also regarded by Pacific Island countries as the “highest priority” to be addressed in health adaptation strategies.

Seia Mikaele Maiava, an organic farmer from Nukunonu, Tokelau, and a 350 Pacific Climate Warrior told Asia Pacific Report:

“Impact of climate to food security is growing in the Pacific. Islands like Tokelau, Kiribati and Tuvalu have salt water intrusion into their soil from rising sea water levels.

“This brings a huge challenge in planting their crops, therefore people will depend on imported foods that are unhealthy.”

Maiava said the salinisation of food crops was leading people to become dependent on imported “high fatty” and sugary food, increasing non-communicable diseases (NCD’s) such as diabetes.

Speaking to Asia Pacific Report from Samoa, Viliamu Iese, a research fellow in climate change, food security, and disaster risk management with the University of the South Pacific’s Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development, said the impact of climate change on food production was strong.

“It reduces access to food, increases malnutrition and reliance on imported processed foods, therefore increasing the risks of NCDs,” he said.

‘Killed the crops’
Maiava and Iese’s statements have been echoed by young journalism student Semi Malaki of Tuvalu, who told the Bearing Witness project: “With the impact of salt water intrusion and sea level rise, the salt water came up and killed the crops.

“People now are not much dependent on root crops, they’re dependent on imported foods from overseas and its had lots of impact on our diets.”

This phenomenon is sometimes known as “over-nutrition” and the Asian Development Bank regards climate-induced changes in food supply as one of the major risks posed by climate change on human health.

“Climate change in the Pacific will have both direct and indirect effects on food security.

“The most direct effect, particularly in the smaller atoll countries, will be further reduction of already declining output per capita as a result of increasing natural disasters and rising sea level in the longer term.”

The WHO notes in its report: “Many participants in the vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning process around the Pacific were firm in their belief that climate change would lead to a worsening of the NCD crisis.”

Though the situation may appear grim, it does not mean Pacific Island countries are not adapting and mitigating to the health impacts of climate change.

‘We are fighting’
Although health adaptation finance may be a problem – climate change impacts on health only serve three percent of current adaptation funding targets according to the WHO – the Pacific has continued its “we are fighting” approach to climate change.

“Throughout their history, Pacific communities have long demonstrated a high degree of resilience to environmental challenges,” the WHO stated.

The Pacific’s national adaptation programmes of action, assessed in the WHO’s report, provide clear pathways for effective adaptation and mitigation.

Maiava also said people in the Pacific were becoming more aware and using innovative ideas to grow healthy, organic food.

“Many people are doing good work to raise awareness of growing your own food and eating healthy. I am part of good organisations doing this. Also, we have a keyhole garden project happening in Tokelau that will help each family to grow their own food,” he said.

The WHO notes that as early as the 1990’s “The health impacts of climate change had been given some consideration in many Pacific Island countries and areas as part of their early work on climate change adaptation, even before these policy documents that specifically address the health impacts of climate change were adopted by the health sector in the region.”

Such praise comes despite the unprecedented rate, scale and impact of climate change in modern human history.

World support needed
However, the WHO notes “whole-of-government” and “whole-of-society” approaches are needed to address climate-sensitive health risks.

With COP23 fast-approaching, it is clear whole-of-world support will be needed to address the human cost of climate change.

• NZ climate change approach must ‘transcend government’, says report
• ‘Live, thrive in a new place’ – financing Pacific climate adaptation 

By the end of the 21st century, sea levels are expected to rise by a maximum of 1.5 metres as a result of climate change. Tropical cyclones will increase in frequency, intensity and severity. Climate change is also projected to leave 150 million people displaced by 2040.

In the Pacific alone, the London School of Economics estimates 1.7 million people could be displaced by 2050 and in the Pacific, this is already happening.

Whole islands, communities, and villages are relocating in a move which is viewed as a form of climate change adaptation. Some 27,000 Carteret Islanders have relocated to nearby Bougainville, the people of Kiribati plan to relocate 2000km to nearby Fiji in 2020 after buying 6000 acres in 2014, and in Fiji itself, approximately 45 villages have been earmarked for relocation.

Julianne Hickey, director of Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, says climate finance plays an important role in the Pacific.

“It’s critical because we need to have adaptation and mitigation measures in order to respond to the challenges of our changing environment in this region. We need to find alternative ways of doing things, cut our carbon emissions but adapt to the many changes that are around us.”

Data by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme’s (SPREP) Pacific Climate Change portal reveals the Pacific currently receives climate finance from approximately 10 funds which are both bilateral and multilateral. The European Union (EU), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the United Kingdom are the central players.

Stefano Manservisi, director-general of International Cooperation and Development of the European Commission (DEVCOM), told Asia Pacific Report in April climate change was the key focus of the EU’s continuing relationship with the Pacific. “Having consulted already with national level authorities on how we can step-up support, notably on climate change, we are 100 percent backing determination to do more,” he said.

However, New Zealand also plays a role in funding mitigation and adaptation projects in the region. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) says it is serious about addressing climate change in New Zealand and in the Pacific.

At COP21, NZ$200 million was pledged in climate related support over four years and the government has contributed three million dollars to the UNFCCC’s Green Climate Fund. One of MFAT’s focuses is switching Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to a low-carbon economy, although New Zealand has been criticised for the lack of its own clean energy revolution and commitment to the Paris Agreement.

‘Most in need’
However, strong climate finance in the region has not always been the case, Hickey said.

“A few years ago there were very little climate finance flows. They were through more bilateral arrangements but now we’re seeing the multilaterals…we’re starting to see an impact but it’s more at the national government level and it’s not always reaching those who are the most in need.”

Independent website Climate Funds Update notes: “The region’s most vulnerable countries, particularly the small Pacific Island states, receive very little funding.”

Speaking at the annual conference of the Australasian Catholic Press Association (ACPA) last week, Hickey said it was important to “speak truth to power” and ask where climate finance was going.

“In the beginning, none of the climate finance was reaching the Pacific, let alone the vulnerable on the margins and those most impacted. What we’re now seeing is the core of the climate finance is flowing, but we need to make sure we keep asking the questions,” she said.

Asked to expand on this when talking separately to Asia Pacific Report, Hickey explained climate finance in the region is geared towards large projects which may not be reaching the most vulnerable.

“There’s a lot of money available for climate change. For mitigation and adaptation, our biggest concern is that it’s about reaching those on the ocean edges and at the grassroots. It’s about reaching the poor and the vulnerable,” she said.

Climate funding benefits
However, one community to benefit from climate change funding is the Fijian village of Tukuraki. Located in the mountainous highlands of Ba, Viti Levu, the village was all but destroyed following a fatal landslide in January 2012.

In the same year, the village was hard-hit by Cyclone Evan and in 2016 was devastated by Cyclone Winston, scattering the community far and wide across the northwest of the island.

Thanks to an EU-funded project in 2014 of F$600,000 (NZ$415,000) and land gifted by a nearby clan, the village, made up of 10 families, was able to relocate to a new site in July 2017. The relocation project has provided the village with 10 new homes, a community hall which doubles as an evacuation centre – it can withstand a category five cyclone – and a Methodist church. The villagers were also given access to clean, running water, showers and flush toilets.

A source from the Ministry of Economy’s Climate Change Unit stresses relocations are not possible without such external funding because they are a long and expensive process.

“It can only be possible with the help of donor funds, financial institutions, and co-finance with the community itself.”

When the Bearing Witness project visited in April, Vilimaina Botitu and her family were one of three families living in the partially built village – one house was still to be built, along with the Methodist church.

She told the Bearing Witness project: “Staying over here, it’s good. A source of water, everything, is just here inside the house. Especially good for us women, is the bathroom and toilet…Before we had to struggle, living the old Fijian lifestyle.”

The Green Climate Fund alone has seen 68 percent of its funding directed towards adaptation and mitigation projects. Of its 43 recent projects, six of these have been in the Pacific. The Solomon Islands, Samoa, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Tuvalu and Fiji have received funding for adaptation and mitigation projects from hydropower development to urban water supply and wastewater management.

However, it is important to remember adapting to climate change can be bittersweet, Hickey said.

“When sea levels rise they lose their home, they lose their place of connection to the land, they lose connection to where their ancestors are buried, and often they lose access to their traditional food sources.

‘Whole new way of life’
“They need to learn a whole new way of life…to live and thrive in a new place,” she said.

For Botitu, the long, gruelling relocation process had cost Tukuraki its rich, but simple life, she said.

“The old Tukuraki, it was a nice village. The relocated site just gives us a place to sleep. There is no place to do the farming.”

So while relocations in the Pacific may be an effective, but bittersweet, form of climate change adaptation Hickey says, it is in danger. Hickey warns if the Pacific sees a fall in funding or loses it altogether, the region will suffer.

“If the Pacific does not build up its resilience within villages, communities and cities, we stand to see loss of life, we potentially will lose food and food sources and that ultimately will affect our health and our wellbeing.

“The unpredictability of climate change means that if climate finance were not able to reach the Pacific or go to other places, the overall health or wellbeing of us as individuals and communities will be severely impacted.”

• NZ climate change approach must ‘transcend government’

Engaging with the Pacific and its stories of climate change is key to tackling the global issue, Catholic organisations have highlighted.

“It’s about listening, it’s about the margins and the peripheries,” said Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand director Julianne Hickey.

Speaking at the Australasian Catholic Press Association’s (ACPA) annual conference in Auckland last week, themed “Communicating for Our Common Home”, Hickey said it was integral that the media carried stories and messages of hope, no matter how different these stories were.

“Climate change is affecting everyone in the world, but we all have different stories about how it is affecting us.

“In some places it’s floods, in some places it’s fire, in some places it’s losing your home, in some places it’s about food and water.

“We have to realise that we’re interconnected and we need to be able to tell those stories and we need to be able to tell those stories of hope,” she said.

John Pickering, director of communication for the Archdiocese of Suva, Fiji, told ACPA members Pacific culture provided answers and a “window of understanding” in the search for better solutions.

‘Equal balance’ responsibility
The greatest vehicle for this, he said, were provincial chiefs.

“A chief’s responsibility is to ensure there is an equal balance of Mother Earth.

“When a chief accepts that first bowl of kava, what he promises to do is become the guardian, the protector, the custodian of people, of land, and sea.”

A further potential cultural source of climate change mitigation came in the form of totemism, Pickering said.

“Every Fijian has an animal, a fish and a wood and they identify themselves in terms of these.

“The point of that is respect, for the fish, for the wood, for the animal.”

Pickering also highlighted what was at stake for the Pacific if more was not done to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Identity, place, space
“Thirty four villages in Fiji are in danger of being swamped by water and they will have to be relocated. That changes the whole dynamic of understanding identity, place, and space.”

Ultimately, Pickering said, the world was faced with a question:

“What sort of future will we leave for our children?”

Questions about the future were also centred on the media.

Lincoln Tan, New Zealand Herald’s diversity, ethnic affairs and immigration senior reporter, said New Zealand’s media was at a “crossroads” as it attempted to find the right model.

The downside of this transition, he said, was a “continued lack of ethnic diversity”.

New Zealand media’s “major issue” was subsequently a lack of cultural diversity, Tan added.

Pacific coverage lacking
Echoing Tan’s concerns, Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, said one of the enduring problems with New Zealand media was the lack of depth and breadth of coverage of the Pacific.

“Coverage has actually declined in the New Zealand media in the past two decades in spite of the growing complexity of issues and problems facing the region,” he said.

Dr Robie was on the programme as one of the speakers but was unable to attend because of a recent serious accident.

Speaking separately to Pacific Media Watch, he said the lack of in-depth reporting, with the notable exception of Radio NZ International, meant that when something happened like a coup in Fiji, the New Zealand public was caught by surprise.

“Lack of coverage of the West Papuan human rights situation, Papua New Guinea’s slide into dictatorship and climate change in the Pacific are just some examples of the appalling gaps in the New Zealand media.”

Reflecting on ‘Communicating Truth in a Post-truth Environment’ Dr Gavin Ellis, a senior lecturer in media and communication at the University of Auckland, said the media’s over-reliance on social media had harmed good journalism and the media’s role of reporting truth.

“I’m worried about a number of things that interfere with the pursuit of truth. First of all, social media being treated as legitimate primary sources. Twitter and Snapchat being used as journalistic publishing platforms,” he said.

Media ‘tipping point’
In this post-truth environment, Dr Ellis reflected the media, and the world, may be headed towards a “tipping point”.

“I believe in what I call ‘cathartic moments’ and maybe we will reach a cathartic moment. Now of course a cathartic moment means you could go two ways, but I can only hope that common sense will prevail.

“We collectively need to start being heard in terms of ensuring we do not polarise our society. Most societies are happy in the middle and that’s where we need to be.”

But there was still hope, he said, if the media “stick with the elements of journalism”.

“My strongest advice is to ensure there is real-time oversight by senior staff to ensure that in the fight to survive in the digital world, we don’t lose sight of the values and practices that define journalism and its pursuit of truth in the public interest.”

• Australasian Catholic Press Association

The effects of climate change on vulnerable areas throughout Fiji could be reduced if the island nation adopts several more land planning measures, says a local researcher.

Speaking at a Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) seminar today about “Disaster Risk Reduction from a Physical Planning Perspective: Fiji”, Joeli Varo, a Lands Officer for the government’s Sustainable Land Use Planning and Development Unit, says there are two ways in which Fiji can both mitigate and adapt to flooding.

These involve “hard measures” such as sea walls and “soft measures” such as ensuring compliance with building regulations.

“I would say we need a combination of both, because in our urban areas they need hard structures — they need sea walls because we cannot do soft measures in those areas. We cannot plant trees, we cannot retreat, we cannot relocate, and we just have to implement hard measures,” he said.

“For rural area settings, there is still room for relocation and retreat. We can apply soft measures there.”

Varo, who completed a Master of Science degree in urban and regional planning, said moving inland was one of the most viable options for alleviating the effects of climate change in Fiji.

Communities at risk
Varo said this was because coastal areas were more vulnerable to being hit by tropical cyclones, compared to inland areas due to infrastructure not complying with building regulations.

This was because houses on the foreshore were required to be a certain distance from sources of water, such as the ocean and rivers. Houses also required a certain size area of grass in order to absorb excess water.

Rural communities and coastal areas were therefore the most severely affected by floodwaters.

“As the result of flooding, stagnant water causes unpleasant smells to linger, pollution in streams and creeks, and a decline in the subsequent quality of drinking water.”

Varo highlighted the impacts of Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston, which devastated Fiji early last year, leaving 44 people dead and 45,000 displaced.

He also said Cyclone Winston represented a growing trend in the Pacific where small island nations were facing extreme weather with greater frequency, intensity and magnitude.

“It’s intensifying and it’s getting bigger in magnitude. We’ve seen an increase from category one to category three, and just recently in 2016 it was category five — imagine that? That is the worst in the South Pacific.”

Higher damage costs
The cost of damage caused by such weather was something that needed to be considered, Varo added.

Data from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) quoted by Varo revealed damage caused by Severe Tropical Cyclone Evan in late 2012 paled in comparison with those of Winston.

Cyclone Evan cost the Fijian government F$75.29 million (NZ$49.68 million), whereas Winston cost a staggering F$1.99 billion (NZ$1.37 billion).

“They’re getting intensified and the magnitude and cost in US dollars is tremendous, from millions to billions. So for small island states such as Fiji, we cannot control this, it’s coming. We just have to mitigate and adapt to these changes and natural phenomena.”

Varo said tackling such “natural phenomena” at the urban planning level had a flow-on effect which reduced the impact of extreme weather events on communities in the Pacific.

He said the responsibility of tackling climate change effects lay with both the community and the government.

“We need to work together in this digital era. We need people, because people define policy. Without the people there is no use for policy. So public participation is much more needed for collaboration with civil society and private stakeholders.”

However, he says this will not change the inevitable.

‘We just have to adapt’
“We cannot stop climate change – bear that in mind. Climate change is coming and no one can stop it. We just have to adapt and mitigate so that our urban areas are resilient to these undesirable forces, like increasing sea levels. We just have to adapt, instead of retreat.”

Varo planned to head to the Caribbean to continue his research into climate change and begin his doctorate.

He said the Caribbean was feeling the effects of climate change in a similar way to the Pacific.

“Unlike New Zealand and Australia that are continental islands, for us Small Island Developing States we need to collaborate among ourselves to save us in the future.

“We are looking up to Australia and New Zealand as our older brothers, to help us small islands collaboratively come together and plan for the next 10 to 15 years.”

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt are in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

A regional meeting to consider key Pacific priorities and responsibilities for advancing commitments under international and regional policy frameworks on climate change migration and displacement opened in Suva today.

Senior Pacific island government officials from Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, as well as representatives of development partners and various experts will be discussing issues at the three-day meeting such as:

• development-migration nexus in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
• building resilience through labour mobility;
• migration and displacement as they relate to loss and damage under the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage;
• and regional mechanisms to address the needs of migrants and displaced persons.

The meeting is a key activity of the European Union funded PCCM project which aims to develop the capacity of Pacific Island countries to address the impacts of climate change on migration through well-managed, rights-based migration schemes and policy frameworks, supported by comprehensive research and knowledge building.

It is a joint collaboration between the European Union funded Pacific Climate Change Migration Project (PCCM) implemented by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) with support from International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations University (UNU).

‘Highly disruptive’
Delivering the keynote address at the opening of the meeting, Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sosene Sopoaga said: “Climate change displacement and unplanned relocation are highly disruptive to livelihoods, culture and society and require proper, well-planned interventions to support people in their efforts to adapt to the challenges, particularly in securing access to decent livelihoods.

“Maintaining sovereignty, self-determination, cultural identity and territorial rights are of primary concern to Pacific Islanders in any form of climate change-related migration.

“The international response must also include adequate strategies to deal with persons displaced because of climate change, and their human rights must be protected.”

Speaking on behalf of the European Union, Christoph Wagner said: “It is clear that climate change, and the impact climate change has on the environment, will become an increasingly important driver of migration from rural to urban areas within Pacific island countries and to other countries.

“The European Union is supporting the PCCM project to help prepare our partner countries for migration. Those who are going to be leaving their countries, either temporarily or on a permanent basis, need assistance from their governments, Pacific regional organisations and development partners.

“We also want to help those Pacific island countries who are going to be receiving migrants to maximise the opportunities that the additional labour, expertise and experience can offer.”

Collective strategy
Dame Meg Taylor, Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, said: “The movement of people in the Pacific due to the effects of climate change is sadly a growing issue that needs our collective attention.

“The region must come together and work out a strategy for how to best ensure that the rights and wellbeing of our Pacific sisters and brothers who are facing displacement and relocation are protected and nurtured. This must include those who do not want to move”

The UN Resident Coordinator for the Pacific based in Fiji, Osnat Lubrani said the UN considers this complex issue requires greater attention in the context of the Pacific region’s journey to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

The head of UNESCAP Pacific Office, Iosefa Maiava, noted that the need to address climate change and mobility issues is recognised in the newly-adopted Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific (FRDP) by Pacific leaders.

The regional meeting will build on existing global and regional policy directions to promote alignment and coherence, including the FRDP, the Paris Agreement, the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage (WIM), the Samoa Pathway and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Debbie Singh is Pacific communications specialist for the UNESCAP Pacific Climate Change and Migration Project.

Despite repeated requests in the past 10-months, relief supplies have still not reached the Nissan district which, comprises of mostly atolls, said Nehan community government member Conrad Willy.

In June, a grade-six student at Pinepal fell from a mangrove tree as she was picking the mangrove beans to eat. She was rushed by dinghy to Buka General Hospital where she was treated and discharged.

Last Friday, four-and-a-half-year-old Raphael Alben fell from a coconut tree and broke both arms while searching for young coconuts.

Willy warned that more children would be hurt as their parents send them out to look for food.

Food shortages

He said the people started facing food shortages towards the end of last year.

Willy said that numerous reports had been presented to the disaster relief office in Bougainville, the community government office and members of parliament regarding the situation at the atolls, but they had not been addressed.

Willy approached the Post-Courier and raised this issue again. He said the newspaper had been running reports on the food shortage faced by the district.

‘Relying on sago’

‘People had been relying on sago because the staple cassava had been destroyed,’ he said.

“We tried planting sweet potato at this time but with the south westerly winds, the salt spray from the sea is destroying sweet potato and banana gardens. Now we are only relying on sago.”

A meeting between the families, the Nissan district executive manager and the Bougainville member for Nissan is planned for Monday to address the food situation.

The Pacific Possible: Climate and Disaster Resilience report, was launched in Fiji at the Symposium on Climate Change Adaption and recommends priority investments that can boost resilience to the year 2040.

It includes possible economic costs of climate adaptation initiatives such as infrastructure for coastal protection, water resources, dealing with severe weather, flooding and agriculture.

Senior Environmental Specialist at the World Bank, Denis Jordy, said vulnerability to climate change and natural hazards increases if new investments are not properly planned.

“This new report quantifies the potential costs of climate adaptation for Pacific Island countries, and targets ways in which decision-makers can effectively manage vulnerability and build resilience to reduce losses, protect livelihoods and save lives.”

Costs of adapting

The report claims the costs of adapting infrastructure to withstand climate change impacts would be an increase on “business as usual” expenditure averaging between two and 20 percent across the Pacific Islands by 2040.

However, these increased costs could be mitigated through reduced economic losses from climate change impacts.

Michael Petterson, Director of the Pacific Community Geosciences Division, said a single disaster could undo many years of economic development.

“This report incorporates risk and environmental hazard impacts as a core element in all development decision-making, allows us the chance to reexamine approaches to development.”

The new report is part of the Pacific Possible series looking at potentially transformative opportunities for Pacific Island countries that warrant further research, understanding and policy action. The series aims to inform government and stakeholder decisions on planning and long-term decision-making.

By Denise Yeo

A two-week journalism stint in Fiji, dubbed “Bearing Witness”, has lent new perspectives on the effects of climate change on AUT journalism student Ami Dhabuwala and honours graduate TJ Aumua.

The project, sponsored by AUT’s Research and Innovation Office (RIO) through a grant to the Pacific Media Centre, gave the two aspiring journalists a chance to meet Pacific climate change experts, and experience first-hand themselves the impact of climate change on everyday lives in Daku, a small village in Fiji.

Aumua, who is also Pacific Media Watch project editor for the PMC, says witnessing climate change’s impact on Daku village was heart-breaking.

“I was aware that climate change was happening before but I didn’t realise it’s devastating impacts,” she says.

Dhabuwala believes that climate change is a human rights issue that demands urgent action today.

“It’s not just about rising sea levels or other environmental effects, it’s also a physical and mental health issue,” she says.

“For many Pacific countries, climate change is a way of life. When we were there, somebody said something that struck me – you can’t stop climate change, you can only adapt to it.”

Multimedia stories
Both students researched and reported for multimedia stories focusing on what Pacific youth are doing to stem effects of climate change, published on the Pacific Media Centre’s new current affairs website Asia Pacific Report.

University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment-Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) communications officer Sarika Chand praised Aumua and Dhabuwala as a delight to work with.

“There are so many different issues that need media attention – the Pacific Media Centre team was more than willing to oblige,” says Chand.

“Especially with the Daku village trip. A big vinaka to TK and Ami for following traditional protocol and being respectful of the local culture.”

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie thanked RIO for providing a funding grant to enable the PMC team to go to Fiji.

“This is the start of a regular Pacific ‘Bearing Witness’ project linking in with USP’s climate change and media research and local Pacific publisher Little Island Press. It is an enterprising awareness and communication programme about the impacts of climate change and how Pacific communities are adapting.”

The trip has also changed the trajectory of TJ and Ami’s careers. Both girls says that not enough is being done in New Zealand to highlight these issues, and hope to do their part.

Climate change journalist
Dhabuwala says she plans to be a climate change journalist.

“This is what is happening to our neighbours. New Zealand is not immune, it will affect us too.”

Aumua says: “The topic of climate change in the Pacific will always be close to my heart wherever my journalist endeavours take me.”

For their next challenge, both Aumua and Dhabuwala will be reporting on the Fourth World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) conference and a Pacific preconference at AUT next month.

The RIO grant also helped fund a special climate change department on Asia Pacific Report and climate change research.

The global offshoot of the climate change movement 350.org, called Break Free, has been waging a campaign against the fossil industry for the past two weeks climaxing this weekend.

As part of the campaign, Break Free successfully blockaded ANZ’s flagship branch in central Auckland today, forcing it to close down for the day.

From May 4 to May 15 – on Sunday, activists from all over the world have protested against fossil fuel industries and other corporates and organisations supporting them.

Protesters in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States as well as in New Zealand have staged “civil disobedience” demonstrations to spread their ideas behind “breaking free” from the fossil fuel industries.

As a part of this movement, 350 Aotearoa has demonstrated in Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton and Dunedin as well as Auckland in New Zealand.

The climate change activists in Auckland successfully closed down the ANZ Queen St branch today by blockading both entrances in Queen and Wellesley Sts.

The activists launched the “Beach Party” campaign by dancing in Auckland’s ANZ bank in Queen St on May 4.

Wave of direct action
“This can be a launch pad for a wave of direct action to keep the major fossil fuels under the ground,” said spokesperson Alex Johnston at the time.

A group of 15-20 people entered the bank branch dancing with music playing in the background.

Activists in swim suits and scuba diving outfits danced and played with a beach ball in this unique protest. They handed out flyers, saying: “Business as usual cannot continue.”

“Break free is a global wave of action and it is helping to bring a whole movement of people into taking direct action for climate change. This protest is to show the banks that you can’t keep operating like this,” Johnston said.

The demonstration lasted for only a couple of minutes and then the activists left the ANZ bank shouting: “Party is over, Divest now.”

Niamh O’Flynn is the executive director for 350 Aotearoa.

“ANZ have invested $13.5 billion [since 2008] in the fossil fuel industry and there is no legitimacy in that anymore,” says Niamh O’Flynn, executive director of 350 Aotearoa.

‘ANZ has responsibility’
“As the largest bank in the Pacific Islands, ANZ has a responsibility to do its part to prevent further damage to the climate.”

According to the activists, they would not accept corporations profiting from industries which are contributing to climate change.

“The time for change is now and people are getting ready to take serious action,” O’Flynn says.

Apart from ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (parent company of ASB), National Australia Bank (Parent Company of BNZ) and Westpac have also invested $10.6 billion, $8.86 billion and $6.33 billion respectively since 2008.

The aim of the “Break Free” movement in New Zealand is to persuade ANZ to divest from fossil fuels.

The activists have demanded that the bank should immediately stop all loans to new coal, oil and gas projects. In addition, they should withdraw all investment in fossil fuel extraction companies within the next 3 years and they should commit to no future investment in fossil fuels.

Alex Johnston says it is the citizens’ collective duty to take action. A proper action plan is needed.

Empowering for action
“It is not just our future; it is also about our future generation. It is empowering that we are taking action. We are pushing for a healthy and sustainable future.”

The young activists said they were contributing to the better future.

Sandy Hildebrandt is a campaigns assistant for 350 Aotearoa.

“We are not asking customers to switch banks yet, as there are no divested banks in New Zealand,” she says.

“While customers are not our targets, we are certainly working every angle to put pressure on banks to divest.”

Almost 100 of people came together today to protest against one of the biggest investors for fossil fuel.

“We can’t see the change in the climate now. The winter has already started but we still feel warmth in the environment,” said a young activist.

Singing and dancing
People were singing and dancing during the protest. Many old-age people also participated in the protest with a great enthusiasm.

Hana and Mathew Blackmore are one older couple taking part. When younger, they participated in the protest against the nuclear weapons and power.

“Our youth have to come forward and fight for it. We are doing this for our children and grandchildren,” the couple said.

The activists sat on the main entrance for more than five hours and managed to block it.

At last, the employees at the ANZ Queen St branch were asked to leave the bank which gave a huge success to the 350 Aotearoa and the protesters.

A media spokesperson for ANZ, Peter Barnao, said the bank respected the activists’ right to freedom of speech and their rights to protest.

Green technology
“ANZ is already expanding into renewable energy. We have also invested in green technology and renewable resources. So the trend is happening.”

O’Flynn said the activists were on the right side of history.

“I think being peaceful and welcoming is the way to involve more people in this moment. Sometimes it is hard and sometimes people don’t always agree with us but I think the future generation will look back and see these people sitting outside of this bank as climate heroes.”

Ami Dhabuwala is an international student journalist from India on the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies and on the Asia Pacific Journalism Studies course at AUT University, New Zealand.

• 350.org Aotearoa
• Break Free

By TJ Aumua in Daku, Fiji Islands

Rising sea levels are a major threat to coastal villages in the Pacific.

Daku village in the Rewa delta area in Tailevu, Fiji, is one village that faces the challenge every day.

Biu Naitasi, Daku’s headman, says that despite the village receiving a floodgate funded by USAid to help drain water, the sea level is still rising and the strength of waves is increasing.

Naitasi told Asia Pacific Report that sea water flooding in their village can reach up to their ankles, forcing some children in the village to relocate to another school.

The salt water has damaged their food plantations and eroded the wooden and concrete support beams on their homes.

While they wait for another floodgate to stop seawater flowing into their crops, they continue to be proactive, using people power to build higher seawalls and filling the flooded land with soil.

• Thanks to the people of Daku village and the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), USAid and the Pacific Community in Fiji for support in making this video.

A 50-minute drive out of Suva city is Daku village, a community of 332 people nestled close to the sea and surrounded by mangroves.

As peaceful as it seems here, the village is one of many in Fiji where the people are working hard to adapt their daily lives to the burdens of climate change.

Village headman Biu Naitasi says he has noticed the sea-level rising around the village within the last 40 years.

But it wasn’t until five years ago, with the assistance of the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) at the University of the South Pacific, first through an AUSAID project and then through the United States Agency for International Development’s Coastal Community Adaptation Project (USAID/C-CAP), that they understood the terminology and its link with climate change.

‘New term’

“[The term] climate change is something new for us. We haven’t heard about it before,” says Naitasi.

Arriving at the village, Asia Pacific Report bore witness to flood waters lapping on the door steps of village homes.

Remnants of the tropical cyclone Winston that savaged Fiji two months ago, and other tropical depressions which have left parts of the nation drenched in heavy rainfall, have left their mark.

Waterlogged land leaves the village vulnerable to water-borne infections, like dengue, filariasis, and diarrhoea, and in the worst case scenario, cholera and typhoid.

Floodgate system
In 2015, USAIDs’ C-CAP initiative implemented a floodgate system, built into the river wall which allows water to flow out of the village while blocking out sea water in high tides or floods.

But relief is still needed when king tides surge onto the land.

“Sometimes it’s up to our ankles,” Naitasi says. “We need another floodgate near our plantations as salt water has damaged our crops, but we’re waiting for funds.

“The plantation area of the village gets flooded every rainy season and during high tides.”

Sea water is also rusting and eroding the wooden and metal homes in the village.

The extreme weather in Fiji in the past month has seen the community having to rebuild and repair their homes.

“Some houses were blown off partly, and some completely, by the cyclone.”

Took shelter
Headman Biu Naitasi says villagers were unable to use electricity and because of flooding many were forced to take shelter in the community hall.

Asia Pacific Report was told the strong winds completely destroyed a family home, forcing all eight members living inside to relocate.

Like Daku, many villages and communities in Fiji are facing similar problems. They are doing the best they can; using traditional methods and human power to heighten coastal walls and eliminate flood water from their homes.

But climate change is escalating, leaving coastal villagers living with the burden of its effects daily.

“Tell them to believe it, climate change is happening,” says Naitasi, sending a message to the world.

“We can’t stop climate change, but we can reduce its effect.”

• More “Bearing Witness” project photos of Daku
• VIDEO: Climate change adaptation in a Fiji village

The low-lying village, with a population of just over 300, is completely surrounded by mangroves.

Villagers are vulnerable to water-borne diseases because of the standing water.

A USAid project is helping the villagers adapt with the installation of a floodgate system.

Pictures by Asia Pacific Report’s Ami Dhabuwala and TJ Aumua.

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Last year’s COP21 Paris agreement on climate change was “a positive outcome’ but did nowhere near enough to address the Pacific’s vulnerabilities, says a regional environmental leader.

Leota Kosi Latu, Director-General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), which has 26 member nations, said: “I think it’s a positive outcome for our regions and a positive outcome for our countries … but it’s not finished yet.”

Latu was giving the closing address to the In the Eye of the Storm Pacific climate change conference yesterday.

The secretariat had had several “key asks” for the Paris conference, most notably “a strong legally binding agreement,” recognition of small island developing states in the Pacific, an agreement to minimise temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and mitigation “architecture”.

Overall, Leota said he was happy with the agreement’s “balance of adaptation and mitigation”. Most of the Secretariat’s key demands were met, though Latu called the document “a compromise agreement”, adding: “One of my disappointments with the Paris agreements is that it didn’t address the issues of oceans.”

Disappointed over treatment
He was also disappointed by the document’s treatment of small island developing nations.

He had hoped to see special provisions for these countries, in acknowledgment that they were the “most vulnerable of the vulnerable” to climate change. The Paris agreement also failed to explicitly provide aid for Pacific countries hit by natural disaster.

The relatively low population of the Pacific should not diminish its importance, Leota added.

The area was “vast in terms of land and ocean” and larger than the whole of Europe. It also faced significant environmental challenges: “We’re talking about a region that is experiencing loss of biodiversity [and] faces challenges in terms of waste and marine pollution.”

Leota said Pacific Island nations “must lead the way,” in the international fight against climate change and should promptly ratify the Paris treaty – Fiji already has.

“We need to encourage countries to sign up,” he said.

SPREC’s new Pacific Climate Change Centre would help carry on the struggle, and the secretariat planned a “Climate Hub Centre of Excellence to help member countries to implement the Paris agreement, Leota added.

NZ ‘must act now’
Opposition Labour MP Su’a William Sio said in an impromptu address at the final forum to end the conference that New Zealand must act now on climate change

“These challenges are going to be there for some time to come,” he said.

Su’a pledged to take action in Parliament.

He hopes the New Zealand government can take greater action to combat climate change, beginning with an evaluation of “economic-envonmental activities”.

Su’a stressed the need to develop a model for an environmentally and economically sustainably society to “get people thinking about the end of the fossil fuel world”.

He also called for a worldwide recognition of “our universal responsibility to one another”.

“The activities of one countries does have an impact on other countries,” said Su’a. The voices of Pacific Island people  should be given consideration in Parliament on relevant issues.

Thomas Leaycraft is a Scoop student journalist intern covering the In the Eye of the Storm conference for Scoop, Asia Pacific Report and Evening Report.

Read more about the In the Eye of the Storm Pacific Climate Conference.

Pacific Island peoples could be “early reclaimers” of a zero-emissions lifestyle, while also urging the international community to take “extreme” mitigation measures, says Dayle Takitimu.

In her keynote address to the In the Eye of the Storm Pacific climate change conference, the indigenous rights and environmental lawyer said she had planned to discuss facts, figures and the details of international agreements, but had torn up her speech after attending the conference’s first day.

Instead, she said: “What I want to offer you today is a part of me, and a part of my truth.”

Arguments about climate change were often too technical and neglected the basic “truths” surrounding the issue, Takitimu added.

“Before we run to textbooks and graphs, it’s about being in touch with what we know, and being in touch with our ways of knowing.” Appreciating these truths — in particular the danger of a reckless disregard for the planet — was needed before serious action could take place.

Takitimu said politicians had all the necessary information to tackle climate change.

While scientists still debated the exact temperature and sea level rises likely over the next century, there were few unknowns regarding the causes of climate change.

‘We know who’s causing it’
“We know where it comes from, what’s causing it, who’s causing it, and that it’s repairable,” she said.

However, politicians chose not to act so as to maintain the status quo and please business interests.

“[Politics] is a dirty word for a reason. It’s cluttering up a lot of stuff.”

Emphasising her status as a prominent indigenous rights lawyer, Takitimu stressed the special, longstanding connection of native people to their land and the potential leadership role of Pacific Islanders in combating climate change.

“We can be early reclaimers of a zero-emissions lifestyle … It’s beautiful, it’s awesome, and we’re awesome.”

Takitimu also urged solidarity between Pacific Island peoples, calling on them to reform their bond as “Tangaroa people”.

A lifestyle of “intergenerational equity” was required to respect the land as the home of forbearers and descendants alike.

Complete trust
“Trust completely that we are worthy of the hope of our grandchildren,” she said.

The climate change discussion should shift towards resolutions – and more radical ones than were contemplated even at last year’s COP21 conference in Paris, Takitimu said.

“Paris was out of date before it was even signed. Extreme mitigation measures are now required … the window for incremental reduction has closed.”

Global climate change education was also needed to inform people about the gravity of the issue and the necessary action.

“Climate change exists between the ears of humanity … up here as a condition,” she said.

Correcting this condition meant spreading an understanding that climate change was a threat to human survival.

“They talk about us being greenies and trying to save the planet … no mate, we’re trying to save you.

Thomas Leaycraft is a Scoop student journalist intern covering the In the Eye of the Storm conference for Scoop, Asia Pacific Report and Evening Report.

Read more about the In the Eye of the Storm Pacific Climate Conference.

Luamanuvao Winnie Laban has been co-organising the university’s Pacific Climate Change conference In the Eye of the Storm this week, which has brought together top scientists, environmentalists, policy makers, community leaders and NGO representatives, from at least 17 Pacific nations.

“Yesterday we heard the President Anote Tong of Kiribati describe how some of the nation’s islands may disappear within two or three decades due to rising sea levels,” she said today.

“We also heard Professor James Renwick describe changes in rainfall, tropical cyclones and temperature extremes, which are having a devastating effect on food security and the communities.

“While the Paris Agreement at COP21 last year brings some hope for an international effort in the long term, that agreement does not address the effects of climate change—such as coastal erosion and insecure water supplies—being felt now by all Pacific people.”

Luamanuvao said the university was committed to working with other organisations to further enhance understanding and research into mitigation and adaptation efforts in the region.

On Thursday, the university will sign a memorandum of understanding with the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), an Apia-based intergovernmental organisation of 26 nations for environmental protection and sustainable development.

The memorandum provides a framework of co-operation between Victoria and SPREP and includes action points such as collaborating on supporting awareness-raising efforts and consulting on social, economic, physical, political and environmental issues in areas such as coral research and enhancing biosecurity.

“This MoU is exactly the sort of action needed if the region is to have any hope of avoiding tragedy. By combining resources, expertise and networks we can work towards building resilience in the Pacific and protecting our environments, homes and livelihoods,” Luamanuvao said.

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When Kiribati President Anote Tong told his story about climate change to the United Nations General Assembly, they didn’t listen.

“They only want to talk about terrorism,” Tong said. “Perhaps we should call it eco-terrorism. Then they might listen.”

Tong was giving the opening keynote speech at today’s In the Eye of the Storm Pacific climate change conference at Victoria University.

While he jokingly requested that New Zealand gift him Kapiti Island — near the capital of Wellington — in case the ocean should “swallow Kiribati”, his remarks painted a bleak picture of a disappearing island nation deeply affected by the rising sea.

Tong said he was often asked, ‘Why don’t you move back [up the main Tarawa Atoll]?’

His response: “Because if we move back, we fall off the other side.” In one recent boat outing, he saw several palm trees falling near the sea due to the worsening soil caused by the rising sea levels.

In Kiribati, houses, arable land, and entire villages were falling below sea level. In one village, only a church remained on a patch of high ground.

Protected church
Tong hoped this church could be protected against the encroaching waters, to serve as an illustration of the effects of the rising oceans on Kiribati.

“We have to undertake quite significant adaptation strategies,” he added. During storms, waves would often roll over much of Kiribati’s main populated atoll of Tarawa.

Building “sustainable” houses was also a major issue.

However, there was so much “momentum” behind climate change that Kiribati’s demise could be inevitable, needing a “plan B”: Kiribati had acquired a significant amount of land from Fiji for potential relocation.

Tong added that many of his citizens were already leaving for countries like New Zealand.

“People are moving because they fear their islands disappearing.”

However, he rejected the idea that these people were “climate refugees”, arguing that all those forced to leave should be welcomed as productive workers through standard immigration systems.

Kiribati’s commitment
Despite this, Tong said Kiribati had “made a commitment that our islands will never disappear”.

He had spent his three terms in office trying to get international action on climate change.

Making clear his frustration with international processes, he said that the UN frequently made agreements protecting people from being hurt by violence but would not do the same on climate change.

The international community had to recognise that “there are people being hurt” because of climate change.

Tong, who in a few weeks will conclude his final term in office, also criticised politicians for protecting coal mining interests and justifying their position by claiming it benefited workers.

“We mustn’t be so naïve … Coal miners don’t benefit, mine owners benefit.” Self-interested politicians were a major problem, he added.

“Governments don’t have a conscience, they only have elections … It becomes about your political career.”

‘Miracle in Paris’
Tong expressed his joy over the “miracle in Paris” following the COP 21 conference there in November last year.

“I hope that what happened in Paris will not be a repetition of what happened in Copenhagen,” he added, noting that it will be interesting to see which countries ratify the COP 21 agreement in the coming months – and then honour their pledges.

Tong concluded by addressing diplomats and other members of the audience who might have felt his speech criticised them. He told them: “If what I have said has made you feel uncomfortable, don’t feel comfortable, and do the right thing.”

Thomas Leaycraft is a Scoop student journalist intern covering the In the Eye of the Storm conference for Scoop, Asia Pacific Report and Evening Report.

Read more about the In the Eye of the Storm Pacific Climate Conference

By Kai Ping Lew in Suva

Recognising losses and damages as a separate issue from adaptation in climate change policy is one of the major developments featured in the Suva Declaration signed by seven Pacific leaders.

The third Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) summit in Suva saw leaders, civil society representatives and the private sector convening to form the declaration which will be brought before COP21 Paris in 12 weeks’ time.

The previous COP agreement featured losses and damages as an element under adaptation, forcing governments to prioritise between both.

Other significant clauses in yesterday’s declaration include the need for the Paris agreement to be ambitious in its measures with a five-year review, be a legally binding protocol and be committed to keeping average global temperature rises below 1.5 degrees centigrade.

The Pacific nations most affected by climate change in the short term include Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands.

At an average of two metres above sea level, Kiribati could be underwater by the end of the century if nothing is done.

Tuvalu faces similar fears, with its highest land mass only five metres above sea level.

Village relocation
Kiribati has to relocate one of its villages, Tebunginako, and has bought 2430 hectares of land on the Fijian island of Vanua Levu to relocate its people.

“We want to come away from Paris with some clear guarantees that something will be done to ensure the future generations will have a chance of survival, that we would remain a sovereign state,” said Kiribati President Anote Tong.

“On the broader scale, we are hoping for the good of humanity to come away with meaningful agreements, not agreements that are cosmetic in nature.”

Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga said natural disasters had been highly exacerbated by climate change, and there was a need to ensure COP21 took that into account.

“We are dealing with the lives of human beings. It’s not about saving economies, or proving science.”

He added that there were limits to how much Tuvalu could adapt, and already they did so in their everyday lives.

Huge vulnerability
United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Change Mary Robinson said the Pacific faced huge vulnerability from the effects of climate change, and there was a need to ensure that their fundamental right to live on their ancestral homes was preserved.

“We’ve come to the realisation that adaptation for us is going to be beyond our borders, because we don’t have the high grounds most other countries have,” said Tong.

However, he had also committed towards building up the island so it will still exist in some form when the sea level rises.

Tongan Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva said relocation was no longer the issue – the issue was when and where they would migrate to as it had become a matter of survival.

Tonga has one of the largest diasporas within the Pacific Island communities, with an estimated 100,000 Tongans living overseas.

Migration with dignity
President Tong spoke of the uncertainty in the future of Kiribati – in the prospects of its citizens and the fate of its low-lying island country.

He rejected the term “climate refugees”, and instead hoped that his people could migrate with dignity, and the preparations needed to begin immediately.

“It’s going to take a long time to train them so that if and when they do migrate, they will not be migrating as we are seeing in Europe, but will migrate within existing processes as people with skills,” said Tong.

Prime Minister Sopoaga stressed the importance of solidarity within the region and emphasised the danger of settling for less in the COP21 negotiations.

“We cannot allow others to say “we’ll relocate you somewhere else” but come away with a loose agreement.

“We must come away with legally binding and ambitious agreements, because failing that we will have failed altogether,” said Sopoaga.

Marshall Islands Minister of Foreign Affairs Tony de Brum said: “There is nothing more humiliating for anyone than to become wards of another civilisation.”

Aggravated crisis
Special Envoy Robinson affirmed that the refugee crisis already seen in Europe would only be aggravated by climate change.

She urged the leaders of the Small Island Developing States to discuss what they needed to take away from COP21 further to present a united front and demand a strong agreement.

“We can get past this if we have enough human solidarity.”

Niklas Pedersen and Kai Ping Lew are postgraduate student journalists from AUT University on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course. They are in Fiji on a two-week internship with Repúblika Magazine and Wansolwara and will also file a series of reports for Pacific Scoop about their experience.

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