In a fervent appeal to the global community, Prime Minister James Marape of Papua New Guinea has called on US President Donald Trump to “rethink” his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and current global climate initiatives.

Marape’s plea came during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting held in Davos, Switzerland, on 23 January 2025.

Expressing deep concern for the impacts of climate change on Papua New Guinea and other vulnerable Pacific Island nations, Marape highlighted the dire consequences these nations face due to rising sea levels and increasingly severe weather patterns.

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“The effects of climate change are not just theoretical for us; they have real, devastating impacts on our fragile economies and our way of life,” he said.

The Prime Minister emphasised that while it was within President Trump’s prerogative to prioritise American interests, withdrawing the United States — the second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide– from the Paris Agreement without implementing measures to curtail coal power production was “totally irresponsible”, Marape said.

“As a leader of a major forest and ocean nation in the Pacific region, I urge President Trump to reconsider his decision.”

He went on to point out the contradiction in the US stance.

US not closing coal plants
“The United States is not shutting down any of its coal power plants yet has chosen to withdraw from critical climate efforts. This is fundamentally irresponsible.

“The science regarding our warming planet is clear — it does not lie,” he said.

Marape further articulated that as the “Leader of the Free World,” Trump had a moral obligation to engage with global climate issues.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape’s plea to President Trump.  Video: PNGTV

“It is morally wrong for President Trump to disregard the pressing challenges of climate change.

He must articulate how he intends to address this critical issue,” he added, stressing that effective global leaders had a responsibility not only to their own nations but also to the planet as a whole.

In a bid to advocate for small island nations that are bearing the brunt of climate impacts, PM Marape announced plans to bring this issue to the upcoming Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).

He hopes to unify the voices of PIF member countries in a collective statement regarding the US withdrawal from climate negotiations.

US revived Pacific relations
“The United States has recently revitalised its relations with the Pacific. It is discouraging to see it retreating from climate discussions that significantly affect our region’s efforts to mitigate climate change,” he said.

Prime Minister Marape reminded the international community that while larger nations might have the capacity to withstand extreme weather events such as typhoons, wildfires, and tornadoes, smaller nations like Papua New Guinea could not endure such impacts.

“For us, every storm and rising tide represents a potential crisis. Big nations can afford to navigate these challenges, but for us, the stakes are incredibly high,” he said.

Marape’s appeal underscores the urgent need for collaborative and sustained global action to combat climate change, particularly for nations like Papua New Guinea, which are disproportionately affected by environmental change.

Republished with permission.

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.

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• 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.

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.

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“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.

A new carbon credit trading deal reached in the final hours of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, has been criticised as a free pass for countries to slack off on efforts to reduce emissions at home.

The deal, sealed at the annual UN climate talks nearly a decade after it was first put forward, will allow countries to buy carbon credits from others to bring down their own balance sheet.

New Zealand had set its targets under the Paris Agreement on the assumption that it would be able to meet some of it through international cooperation — “so getting this up and running is really important”, Compass Climate head Christina Hood said.

• READ MORE: Fractious COP29 lands $300bn climate finance goal, dashing hopes of the poorest
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“It’s a tool, it’s neither good nor bad, but there’s going to have to be a lot of scrutiny on whether the government is taking a high-ambition, high-integrity path, or just trying to do the minimum possible.”

The plan had taken nine years to go through because countries determined to do it right had been holding out for a process with the right checks and balances in place, she said.

As it stood, countries would have to report yearly to the UN on their trading activities, but it was up to society and other countries to scrutinise behaviour.

Cindy Baxter, a COP veteran who has been at all but seven of the conferences, said it was in-line with the way Aotearoa New Zealand wanted to go about reducing its emissions.

‘We’re not alone, but . . .’
“We’re not alone, Switzerland is similar and Japan as well, but certainly New Zealand is aiming to meet by far the largest proportion of our climate target, [out of] anywhere in the OECD, through carbon trading.”

The new scheme fell under Article six of the Paris Agreement, and a statement from COP29 said it was expected to reduce the cost of implementing countries’ national climate plans by up to US$250 billion (NZ$428.5b) per year.

COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev said “climate change is a transnational challenge and Article six will enable transnational solutions. Because the atmosphere does not care where emissions savings are made.”

But Baxter said there was not enough transparency in the scheme, and plenty of loopholes. One of the issues was ensuring projects resulting in carbon credits continued to reduce emissions after the credits were traded.

“For example, if you’re trying to save some mangroves in Fiji, you give Fiji a whole bunch of money and say this is going to offset this amount of carbon, but what if those mangroves are destroyed by a drought, or a great big cyclone?”

Countries should be cutting emissions at home, she said.

“And that is something New Zealand is not very good at doing, has a really bad reputation for doing. We’ve either planted trees, or now we’re trying to throw money at offset.”

Greenpeace spokesperson Amanda Larsson said she, too, was concerned it would take the onus off big polluters to make reductions at home, calling it a “get out of jail free card”.

‘Lot of junk credits’
“Ultimately, we really need to see significant cuts in climate pollution,” she said. “And there’s no such thing as high-integrity voluntary carbon markets, and a history of a lot of junk credits being sold.”

Countries with the means to make meaningful change at home should not be relying on other countries stepping up, she said

The Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson Teanau Tuiono said there was strong potential in the proposal, but it was “imperative to ensure the framework is robust, and protects the rights of indigenous peoples at the same time as incentivising carbon sequestration”.

It should be a wake-up call to change New Zealand’s over-reliance on risky pine plantations and instead support permanent native afforestation, he said.

“This proposal emphasises how solving the climate crisis requires global collaboration on the most difficult issues. That requires building trust and confidence, by meeting commitments countries make to each other.

“Backing out of these by, for instance, restarting oil and gas exploration directly against the wishes of our Pacific relatives, is not the way do to that.”

Conference overall ‘disappointing and frustrating’
Baxter said it had been “very difficult being forced to have another COP in a petro-state”, where the host state did not have much to gain by making big progress.

“What that means is that there is not that impetus to bang heads together and get really strong agreement,” she said.

But the blame could not be placed entirely on the leadership.

“The COP process is set up to work if governments bring their A-games, and they don’t,” she said.

“People should be bringing their really strong new climate targets [and] very few are doing that.”

Another deal was clinched in overtime of the two-week conference, promising US$300 billion (NZ$514 billion) each year by 2035 for developing nations to tackle climate emissions.

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

Pacific delegates fear the implications of a Trump presidency and breach of the 1.5 degree Celsius warming target will overshadow negotiations on climate finance at the UN’s annual COP talks that have started in Azerbaijan this week.

At the COP29 summit — dubbed the “finance COP” — Pacific nations will seek not just more monetary commitment from high-emitting nations but also for the funds to be paid and distributed to those countries facing the worst climate impacts.

With the US as one of the world’s largest emitters, it is feared Trump’s past withdrawal from the Paris Agreement could foreshadow diminished American involvement in climate commitments.

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“We have our work cut-out for us. We are wary that we have the Trump administration coming through and may not be favourable to some of the climate funding that America has proposed,” Samoan academic and COP veteran Salā George Carter told BenarNews.

“We will continue to look for other ways to work with the US, if not with the government then maybe with businesses.”

This year, for the first time, a COP President’s Scientific Council has been formed to be actively involved in the negotiations. Carter is the sole Pacific representative.

Past COP funding promises of US$100 billion annually from developed countries to support vulnerable nations “has never been achieved in any of the years,” he said.

Disproportionate Pacific burden
Pacific nations contribute minimally to global emissions but often bear a disproportionate burden of climate change impacts.

Pacific Island Climate Action Network regional director Rufino Varea argues wealthier nations have a responsibility to support adaptation efforts in these vulnerable regions.

“The Pacific advocates for increased climate finance from wealthier nations, utilizing innovative mechanisms like fossil fuel levies to support adaptation, loss and damage, and a just transition for vulnerable communities,” Varea told BenarNews.

COP29 is being held in the capital of Azerbaijan, the port city of Baku on the oil and gas rich Caspian Sea, once an important waypoint on the ancient Silk Road connecting China to Europe.

The country bordering Russia, Iran, Georgia and Armenia is now one of the world’s most fossil fuel export dependent economies.

About 40,000 delegates will attend COP29 from all the U.N. member states including political leaders, diplomats, scientists, officials, civil society organizations, journalists, activists, Indigenous groups and many more.

All nations are party to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and most signed up to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and the 1.5 degree target.

Priorities for Pacific
Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Baron Waqa in a statement yesterday said “the priorities of the Pacific Islands countries, include keeping the 1.5 degree goal alive.”

“The outcomes of COP 29 must deliver on what is non-negotiable – our survival,” he said.

Ahead of COP29, the 39 members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) — representing the Pacific, Caribbean, African, Indian, and South China Sea — met in Baku to discuss negotiation priorities to achieve the 1.5 degree target and make meaningful progress on climate finance.

Pacific negotiators have historically found COP outcomes disappointing, yet they continue to advocate for greater accountability from major polluters.

“There have been people who have come to COP and refuse to attend anymore,” Carter said. “They believe it is a waste of time coming here because of very little delivery at the end of each COP.”

Papua New Guinea is not attending in Baku in an official capacity this year, citing lack of progress, but some key PNG diplomats are present to support the Pacific’s goals.

Climate data last week from the Europe Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service predicted 2024 will be the hottest year on record, and likely the first year to exceed the 1.5 degree threshold set in Paris.

Science becoming marginalised
Delegates worry science is becoming marginalised in climate negotiations, with some “arguing that we have reached 1.5, why do we continue to push for 1.5?,” Carter said.

“Although we have reached 1.5 degrees, we should not remove it. In fact, we should keep it as a long-time goal,” he said.

Carter argues for the importance of incorporating both scientific evidence and “our lived experience of climate change” in policy discussions.

The fight for the Paris target and loss and damage funding has been central to Pacific advocacy at previous COPs, despite persistent resistance from some countries.

The 1.5-degree target is “a lifeline of survival for communities and people in our region and in most island nations,” Varea said.

He stressed the need for “a progressive climate finance goal based on the needs and priorities of developing countries, small island developing states (SIDS), and least developed countries (LDC) to enable all countries to retain the 1.5 ambition and implement measures for resilience and loss and damage (finance).”

“As Pacific civil society, we obviously want the most ambitious outcomes to protect people and the planet.”

Pacific negotiators include prominent leaders, such as President Hilde Heine of the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu’s Special Envoy Ralph Regenvanu, Tuvalu’s Climate Change Minister Maina Talia and negotiators Anne Rasmussen from Samoa and Fiji’s Ambassador Amena Yauvoli.

Republished from BenarNews with permission.

While attention is focused on economists finding a $500 million-a-year hole in National’s tax plans, a similar-sized hole in climate costings is hiding in plain sight — and it applies to Labour, too.

National appears to have the bigger gap, however.

The gulf was highlighted in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update (PREFU) — Treasury’s official word on the state of the government’s books — which explicitly excluded the cost of meeting New Zealand’s international climate target under the Paris Agreement.

• READ MORE: Other NZ election 2023 climate crisis reports

Asked how they would pay this week, politicians gave unclear answers. But the obligation was still very real.

Both Labour and National have said they are committed to meeting the country’s international climate target, known as an NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions).

Under the Paris Agreement, which covers almost every nation on the planet, New Zealand has promised to cut emissions by 41 percent off 2005 levels by 2030. Exporters and carbon market experts say failing to meet that pledge could jeopardise international trade — nevermind the fact that following the Paris Agreement is humanity’s best hope for avoiding more expensive and deadly heating.

New Zealand plans to meet its target in two ways. First, it will do as much as it can inside the country by meeting a set of “emissions budgets”.

No way to meet target
But when the Climate Change Commission ran the numbers, it concluded there was no way to meet the whole target with action at home. Because New Zealand started slow at tackling emissions, cutting transport, industry, farming and electricity emissions that quickly would cause too much economic pain, it concluded.

So there is also a second part to the target: buying carbon credits from overseas. Typically, economists assume this is cheaper than making cuts in emissions at home, though it depends on the project.

While no purchases will be made until after the election, the kinds of things that could qualify include retiring coal boilers in developing countries, or planting forests.

This is where the gap in the books comes in. Treasury had previously put the cost of buying these credits from overseas — and an estimated 100 million tonnes of them will be needed, at last count — at between $3.3 billion and more than $23 billion between now and 2030.

Even at the lower end of projections, it could work out at around $500 million a year.

Whichever way the government decides to do it, PREFU said the costs would be “significant” and will start biting “within the current fiscal forecast period”.

As things stand, according to Climate Change Minister James Shaw, one or possibly two rounds of purchases could be made in the next four years, with a third and final “washup” at the end of the decade.

Election may change timing
The election could change the timing, but whoever is in government will be expected to start showing progress towards meeting their Paris target well before the end of the decade, said carbon market expert Christina Hood from Compass Climate.

“There’s this common misconception that whoever the finance minister is in 2032 is going to have to get their chequebook out and square up by however much we missed by. It doesn’t work that way at all.

“Every emission (saving) we count has to actually occur during those years (before 2030), so we need to get on with funding that.”

Yet despite starting to fall due within the next four years, the costs did not appear as a liability on the government’s books. Nor do the major parties seem to be clear on how much to budget for them.

Bold claims, few details
This week, neither National nor Labour answered clearly how much they had planned to set aside for these costs nor how they intended to pay them. They instead focused their answers on wanting to cut planet-heating emissions more deeply inside New Zealand’s borders.

At times, politicians seemed to confuse domestic emissions budgets with the $3 billion-plus added cost of buying offsets to meet the Paris target, or they made heroic statements about how much they could do onshore, without supplying the figures behind them.

A quick reminder: the 100-odd million tonnes in overseas offsets that it was estimated we would need were on top of meeting New Zealand’s domestic emissions budgets, not instead of it. Only a truly incredible effort could meet the entire amount inside the country, requiring deep and fast climate action on a scale neither party has hinted at.

Currently, New Zealand is not even on track to meet its domestic emissions budgets, as Climate Change Commission chief executive Jo Hendy told a business and climate conference in Auckland this week.

“Latest projections show we are not on track in every single sector, so we are going to have to do more,” she said. “We are particularly reliant on pushing the dial in transport and in process heat.”

Yet when RNZ asked about the $3 billion-plus cost on the campaign trail, politicians appeared to be planning to overperform on those budgets, sometimes by impressive amounts. Their answers suggested they may not need to worry too much about that $3 billion-plus.

Here’s what Labour leader Chris Hipkins said, when asked if he had costed for meeting Paris: “We still have a way to go before we have to make a final decision on how best to meet our commitments there. We’re on track to meet our first emissions budget.

Working harder
“We’ve still got the second and third emissions reduction budgets to go. If we don’t meet our targets there is a period of time when we can figure out how best to remedy that, and that includes working harder in the second period to compensate for that.

“But we’re confident that with the stuff we’ve got in place at the moment, we’re on track to meet our first target.”

Hipkins did not address paying for offshore credits, which were required even if the country met all three domestic budgets. As prime minister, he rolled back a biofuel policy and, like National, has focused his transport promises mainly on building new roads rather than a strong shift to lower-emissions modes.

He has also promised help for home insulation and solar, but it was not clear if his new promises compensated for the cuts.

Asked the same question, National leader Christopher Luxon took aim at the government for undermining the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), saying the scheme should do more of the “heavy lifting”.

He, too, skirted the question of paying for offsets.

For context, the ETS made polluters pay for around half the country’s domestic climate pollution (the other half was from agriculture) and was already factored into projections of needing 100 million-odd tonnes of extra ‘top up’ help from overseas.

The scheme could do more, particularly if carbon prices went higher (taking petrol prices with them), or if farming was included, or if there were no limits on planting land in cheap pine trees, but Luxon did not detail how National would navigate these kinds of changes.

Cutting domestic emissions
Meanwhile, other party spokespeople talked-up cutting domestic emissions.

Labour environment spokesperson David Parker told the conference in Auckland he wanted to look at claims that native afforestation could meet the entire Paris target (without overseas help).

National’s climate spokesperson Simon Watts told the same gathering — the annual Climate Change and Business Conference — that National believed it could meet 70-75 percent of the 2030 target inside these shores, a figure considerably higher than previous estimates by the Climate Change Commission.

Watts did not supply details on how that would be achieved, though he discussed lightening regulation on wind and solar energy.

His party has said it would scrap Labour’s Clean Car Discount and major grants to companies to switch off coal boilers, and it would also delay pricing farming emissions a further five years, until 2030. There were questions about how it would meet even the current domestic emissions budgets.

The cost of waiting
Hood had a spot of good news on the cost front. She told RNZ that based on recent purchases by Switzerland, the cost of overseas carbon offsets was likely to be towards the lower end of Treasury’s range.

Even if the government winded up buying 100 million tonnes of savings offshore, that was still only around half the quantity the John Key-led government expected it might have to stump up for when it made its first Paris Agreement pledge, despite the first pledge being weaker on climate than the current one, she noted.

But getting offsets at the lower end of the cost range relies on the government getting moving on lining them up and buying them, she says.

Shaw told RNZ that environmental integrity would be a bottom line after New Zealand was burned for buying valueless “hot air” credits from Russia and Ukraine in the early years of carbon trading.

As well as Switzerland, Singapore and others had already started striking deals to buy the offsets they needed.

While the New Zealand Government has been scoping out prospective sellers overseas, it has refused to reveal who it is talking to, citing commercial sensitivity.

The ministries for Foreign Affairs and the Environment were working on advice to Cabinet on how to make these purchases and ensure the carbon saved was real. But that advice will not land until after the election.

Most expensive time to buy
One thing is clear. 2030 will be the most expensive time to buy, Hood said, because many countries will be panic-buying from overseas projects to meet their missed domestic commitments. Shaw agreed.

“A whole bunch of countries will be going, ‘Oh crap, I’ve missed my target,’ and scrambling around trying to find ways to fill the gap.”

Shaw wanted Paris costs to go into PREFU, making it clear to the government that any money spent on domestic action on climate change was also a cost saving in terms of buying fewer offshore credits.

“This is one of the things that worries me about what some of the other parties are saying, is that they aren’t really accounting for [Paris] in their fiscal plans.”

Shaw called the huge variance in Treasury ‘s $3 billion-23 billion estimate “unhelpful”.

“It’s such a wide variance it’s hard to trust it. At the moment… people are putting their fingers in their ears and saying ‘lalalala”.”

But asked how much the Green Party had costed for meeting New Zealand’s offshore climate commitments, Shaw would not be drawn on naming a more accurate number.

Treasury estimate best
“The best estimate I’ve got is the Treasury estimate. The Ministry for the Environment and MFAT (Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade) are doing a lot of work on this at the moment, but they’re not going to have a report back until just before Christmas. If I was to give you a number I would be pulling it out of thin air.”

As for how to pay for it, Shaw said ETS proceeds from polluters could do a lot of it.

“In a good year that’s a billion dollars, so if there’s seven years for us to do that it’s $7 billion.”

But Shaw also acknowledged there were a lot of other calls on that money — including for adapting to climate change, paying for domestic carbon savings, and helping low-income families weather the costs of higher emissions prices, which boost fuel and electricity costs.

National has said it would use ETS proceeds to help fund its tax cuts, meaning it will need to pay for the Paris target (both the offshore and onshore parts) some other way.

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

After two hard-fought weeks of negotiations, the Glasgow climate change summit is, at last, over. All 197 participating countries adopted the so-called Glasgow Climate Pact, despite an 11th hour intervention by India in which the final agreement was watered down from “phasing out” coal to “phasing down”.

In an emotional final speech, COP26 president Alok Sharma apologised for this last-minute change.

His apology goes to the heart of the goals of COP26 in Glasgow: the hope it would deliver outcomes matching the urgent “code red” action needed to achieve the Paris Agreement target.

• READ MORE: COP26: experts react to the UN climate summit and Glasgow Pact
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• Other COP26 reports

At the summit’s outset, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged countries to “keep the goal of 1.5℃ alive”, to accelerate the decarbonisation of the global economy, and to phase out coal.

So, was COP26 a failure? If we evaluate this using the summits original stated goals, the answer is yes, it fell short. Two big ticket items weren’t realised: renewing targets for 2030 that align with limiting warming to 1.5℃, and an agreement on accelerating the phase-out of coal.

But among the failures, there were important decisions and notable bright spots. So let’s take a look at the summit’s defining issues.

We’ve made serious breakthroughs @COP26.

We’ve kept 1.5 alive and made huge progress on coal, cars, cash and trees.

And while there is still so much that needs to be done to save our planet, we’ll look back at COP26 as the moment humanity finally got real about climate change. pic.twitter.com/Rf91HN4fS3

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 13, 2021

Weak 2030 targets
The goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit global temperature rise to well below 2℃ this century, and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5℃. Catastrophic impacts will be unleashed beyond this point, such as sea level rise and more intense and frequent natural disasters.

But new projections from Climate Action Tracker show even if all COP26 pledges are met, the planet is on track to warm by 2.1℃ — or 2.4℃ if only 2030 targets are met.

Despite the Australian government’s recent climate announcements, this nation’s 2030 target remains the same as in 2015. If all countries adopted such meagre near-term targets, global temperature rise would be on track for up to 3℃.

Technically, the 1.5℃ limit is still within reach because, under the Glasgow pact, countries are asked to update their 2030 targets in a year’s time. However, as Sharma said, “the pulse of 1.5 is weak”.

And as Australia’s experience shows, domestic politics rather than international pressure is often the force driving climate policy. So there are no guarantees Australia or other nations will deliver greater ambition in 2022.

“Many of our small, low-lying islands may disappear by the end of this century. That means the country will be lost.”

Palau’s Environment Minister Steven Victor tells #Newsnight decisions made tonight at #COP26 are also about “deciding whether we keep a culture alive” pic.twitter.com/Qnr0X219om

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) November 11, 2021

Phase down, not out
India’s intervention to change the final wording to “phase down” coal rather than “phase out” dampens the urgency to shift away from coal.

India is the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the United States. The country relies heavily on coal, and coal-powered generation is expected to grow by 4.6 percent each year to 2024.

India was the most prominent objector to the “phase out” wording, but also had support from China.

And US climate envoy John Kerry argued that carbon capture and storage technology could be developed further, to trap emissions at the source and store them underground.

Carbon capture and storage is a controversial proposition for climate action. It is not proven at scale, and we don’t yet know if captured emissions stored underground will eventually return to the atmosphere. And around the world, relatively few large-scale underground storage locations exist.

It is hard to see this expensive technology ever being cost-competitive with cheap renewable energy.

In a crucial outcome, COP26 also finalised rules for global carbon trading, known as Article 6 under the Paris Agreement. However under the rules, the fossil fuel industry will be allowed to “offset” its carbon emissions and carry on polluting. Combined with the “phasing down” change, this will see fossil fuel emissions continue.

It wasn’t all bad
Despite the shortcomings, COP26 led to a number of important positive outcomes.

The world has taken an unambiguous turn away from fossil fuel as a source of energy. And the 1.5℃ global warming target has taken centre stage, with the recognition that reaching this target will require rapid, deep and sustained emissions reductions of 45 percent by 2030, relative to 2010 levels.

What’s more, the pact emphasises the importance to mitigation of nature and ecosystems, including protecting forests and biodiversity. This comes on top of a side deal struck by Australia and 123 other countries promising to end deforestation by 2030.

The pact also urges countries to fully deliver on an outstanding promise to deliver US$100 billion a year for five years to developing countries vulnerable to climate damage. It also emphasises the importance of transparency in implementing the pledges.

Nations are also invited to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets as necessary to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal by the end of 2022. In support of this, it was agreed to hold a high-level ministerial roundtable meeting each year focused on raising ambition out to 2030.

The US and China climate agreement is also cause for cautious optimism.

Despite the world not being on track for the 1.5℃ goal, momentum is headed in the right direction. And the mere fact that a reduction in coal use was directly addressed in the final text signals change may be possible.

But whether it comes in the small window we have left to stop catastrophic climate change remains to be seen.

Dr Robert Hales, director of the Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, Griffith University and Dr Brendan Mackey, director of the Griffith Climate Change Response Programme, Griffith University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

As the Glasgow climate summits gets underway, New Zealand’s government has announced a revised pledge, with a headline figure of a 50 percent reduction on gross 2005 emissions by the end of this decade.

This looks good on the surface, but the substance of this new commitment, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), is best assessed in emissions across decades.

New Zealand’s actual emissions in the 2010s were 701 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide equivalent. The carbon budget for the 2020s is 675Mt. The old pledge for the 2020s was 623Mt.

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The Climate Change Commission’s advice was for “much less than” 593Mt, and the new NDC is 571Mt. So yes, the new pledge meets the commission’s advice and is a step up on the old, but it does not meet our fair share under the Paris Agreement.

It is also a stretch to call the new NDC consistent with the goal of keeping global temperature rise under 1.5℃.

True 1.5℃ compliance would require halving fossil fuel burning over the next decade, while the current plan is for cuts of a quarter.

Emissions need to halve this decade
Countries’ climate pledges are at the heart of the Paris Agreement. The initial round of pledges in 2016 added up to global warming of 3.5℃, but it was always intended they would be ratcheted up over time.

In the run-up to COP26, a flurry of new announcements brought that figure down to 2.7℃ — better, but still a significant miss on 1.5℃.

As this graph from the UN’s Emissions Gap Report 2021 shows, the world will need to halve emissions this decade to keep on track for 1.5℃.

New Zealand’s first NDC, for net 2030 emissions to be 30 percent below gross 2005 emissions, was widely seen as inadequate. An update, reflecting the ambition of the 2019 Zero Carbon Act to keep warming below 1.5℃, has been awaited eagerly.

But several factors have combined to make a truly ambitious NDC particularly difficult.

First, New Zealand’s old climate strategy was based on tree planting and the purchase of offshore carbon credits. The tree planting came to and end in the early 2010s and is only now resuming, while the Emissions Trading Scheme was closed to international markets in 2015. The Paris Agreement was intended to allow a restart of international carbon trading, but this has not yet been possible.

Second, New Zealand has a terrible record in cutting emissions so far. Burning of fossil fuels actually increased by 9 percent from 2016 to 2019. It’s a challenge to turn around our high-emissions economy.

Third, our new climate strategy, involving carbon budgets and pathways under advice from the Climate Change Commission, is only just kicking in. The government has made an in-principle agreement on carbon budgets out to 2030, and has begun consultation on how to meet them. The full emissions-reduction plan will not be ready until May 2022.

Regarding a revised NDC, the government passed the buck and asked the commission for advice. The commission declined to give specific recommendations, but advised:

We recommend that to make the NDC more likely to be compatible with contributing to global efforts under the Paris Agreement to limit warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels, the contribution Aotearoa makes over the NDC period should reflect a reduction to net emissions of much more than 36 percent below 2005 gross levels by 2030, with the likelihood of compatibility increasing as the NDC is strengthened further.

The government then received advice on what would be a fair target for New Zealand. However, any consideration of historic or economic responsibility points to vastly increased cuts, essentially leading to net-zero emissions by 2030.

Announcing the new NDC, Climate Change Minister James Shaw admitted it wasn’t enough, saying:

I think we should be doing a whole lot more. But, the alternative is committing to something that we can’t deliver on.

What proper climate action could look like
Only about a third of New Zealand’s pledged emissions cuts will come from within the country. The rest will have to be purchased as carbon credits from offshore mitigation.

That’s the same amount (100Mt) that Japan, with an economy 25 times larger than New Zealand’s, is planning to include in its NDC. There is no system for doing this yet, or for ensuring these cuts are genuine. And there’s a price tag, possibly running into many billions of dollars.

New Zealand has an impressive climate framework in place. Unfortunately, just as its institutions are beginning to bite, they are starting to falter against the scale of the challenge.

The commission’s advice to the minister was disappointing. It’s being challenged in court by Lawyers For Climate Action New Zealand, whose judicial review in relation to both the NDC and the domestic emissions budgets will be heard in February 2022.

With only two months to go until 2022 and the official start of the carbon budgets, there is no plan how to meet them. The suggestions in the consultation document add up to only half the cuts needed for the first budget period.

Thinking in the transport area is the furthest advanced, with a solid approach to fuel efficiency already approved, and an acknowledgement total driving must decrease, active and public transport must increase, and new roads may not be compatible with climate targets.

But industry needs to step up massively. The proposed 2037 end date for coal burning is far too late, while the milk cooperative Fonterra — poised to announce a record payout to farmers — intends to begin phasing out natural gas for milk drying only after that date.

The potentially most far-reaching suggestion is to set a renewable energy target. A clear path to 100 percent renewable energy would provide a significant counterweight to the endless debates about trees and agricultural emissions, but it is still barely on the radar.

Perhaps one outcome of the new NDC will be that, faced with the prospect of a NZ$5 billion bill for offshore mitigation, we might decide to spend the money on emissions cuts in Aotearoa instead.

Dr Robert McLachlan is professor in applied mathematics at Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The Pacific Islands are in grave danger and at the frontline of global climate change and the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, known as COP26, in Glasgow this week is vitally important for islanders, says Reverend James Bhagwan.

The general secretary of the Suva-based regional Pacific Conference of Churches visited Geneva last week on his way to COP26 in Scotland’s largest city taking place from today until November 12.

“COP26 is important because if this doesn’t work, then we’re in serious danger. It’s already obvious that many of the targets set during the Paris Agreement in 2015 have not been met,” says Reverend Bhagwan with passion and sadness tinging his voice.

• READ MORE: COP26: Time for New Zealand to show regional leadership on climate change
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“We’re in danger of going well beyond the 1.5C limit of carbon emissions that we need to maintain where we’re at.”

The Pacific Conference has a membership of 33 churches and 10 national councils of churches spread across 19 Pacific Island countries and territories, effectively covering one-third of the world’s surface.

Some progress on countering the effects of climate change have been made in global awareness, says Reverend Bhagwan, a Methodist minister.

The return of the United States to the treaty around it helps.

“And even though there is significant commitment to reduce carbon emissions by countries to as much as 26 percent of those countries that have committed, globally we’re going to see an increase of carbon emissions by 19 plus percent by 2030, which isn’t far away—that’s nine years away,” rues Reverend Bhagwan.

Greenhouse gases warning
On October 25, the World Meteorological Organisation secretary-general Dr Petteri Taalas, releasing a report on greenhouse gases, confirmed Reverend Bhagwan’s worries in a warning:

“We are way off track. At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”

Reverend Bhagwan said his churches’ group covers from the Marshall Islands in the northern Pacific across to Ma’ohi Nui (French Polynesia) in the eastern Pacific, down to Aotearoa New Zealand in the southern Pacific.

The conference also has member churches in West Papua and Australia, and it serves a population of some 15 million people.

For the members of the Pacific region churches, climate change is not an abstract issue.

‘Frontline’ of climate change
“We are on the frontline of climate change; we have rising seas we have ocean acidification which affects our fish and the life of the ocean,” says Reverend Bhagwan.

“We have extreme weather events now regularly, and the category five cyclones which, in the past, would be the exception to the rule for us, now are the baseline for our extreme weather events. During the cyclone season, at least one cyclone will be category five.

“And so, you just pray that either it goes past, or it drops enough when it reaches us, and usually these systems do not affect just one country.”

Reverend Bhagwan notes that the churches in the Pacific region play a much more integral role in society than they do in some of the secular nations.

Because of the covid-19 pandemic, “we’re not getting as many Pacific Islanders attending COP26 as we would like, both in governments and in civil society.

“And so, it’s important that those who can come do so. We, the church, play a very significant role in the Pacific. The Pacific is approximately 90 percent Christian, particularly within the island communities.

“And so, we have significant influence within the region, working with governments. But we also recognise ourselves as part of the civil society space,” said Reverend Bhagwan.

“And so, we have that ability in the Pacific to walk in these spaces, because leaders, government leaders, ministers, workers, civil servants — they’re members of our churches.

“So, we are providing pastoral care and engagement with those in leadership and government leadership, but also that prophetic voice.”

Peter Kenny is a journalist of The Ecumenical.

As the UN climate summit in Glasgow kicks off tomorrow, it marks the deadline for countries to make more ambitious pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The meeting is the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and is being heralded as the last best chance to avoid devastating temperature rise that would endanger billions of people and disrupt the planet’s life-support systems.

New Zealand will be represented by the Climate Minister and Green Party co-leader, James Shaw, along with a slimmed-down team of diplomats.

• READ MORE: COP26: 4 ways rich nations can keep promises to curb emissions and fund climate adaptation
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Shaw, who described climate change as the “most significant threat that we face for decades to come”, will take part in negotiations aimed at achieving global net zero, protecting communities and natural habitats and mobilising finance to adequately respond to the climate crisis.

This is the time for New Zealand to commit to delivering on its fair share of what is necessary to avoid runaway global warming.

To understand why COP26 is so important we need to look back to a previous summit, COP21 in 2015, which resulted in the Paris Agreement. Countries agreed to work together to keep global warming well below 2℃ and to aim for no more than 1.5℃.

They also agreed to publish plans to show how much they would reduce emissions and to update these pledges every five years — which is what should be happening at the Glasgow summit. Collectively, current climate pledges (known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs) continue to fall a long way short of limiting global warming to 1.5℃.

Many countries have failed to keep pace with what their climate pledges promised. The window to limit temperature rise to 1.5℃ is closing fast.

Time to raise climate ambition
On our current trajectory, global temperature is likely to increase well above the 2℃ upper limit of the Paris Agreement, according to a UN report released last week.

New Zealand has agreed to take ambitious action to meet the 1.5℃ target. But its current pledge (to bring emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030) will not achieve this.

If all countries followed New Zealand’s present commitments, global warming would reach up to 3℃. The government has committed to increase New Zealand’s NDC — after receiving advice from the Climate Change Commission that its current pledge is not consistent with the 1.5℃ goal — but has not yet outlined a figure.

The effects of the growing climate crisis are already present in our corner of the world. Aotearoa is becoming more familiar with weather extremes, flooding and prolonged drought.

Many of our low-lying Pacific island neighbours are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Some are already looking to New Zealand to take stronger regional leadership on climate change.

A perception of New Zealand as a potential safe haven and “Pacific lifeboat” reminds us of the coming challenge of climate refugees, should global warming exceed a safe upper limit.

More work to do
New Zealand’s emissions have continued to rise since the Paris summit but our record on climate action has some positives. The Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act, enacted in 2019, requires greenhouse gas emissions (other than biogenic methane) to reach net zero by 2050.

Only a handful of other countries have enshrined such a goal in law.

The act also established the Climate Change Commission, which has already provided independent advice to the government on emissions budgets and an emissions reduction plan for 2022-2025. But much more needs to be done, and quickly, if we are to meet our international commitments and fulfil our domestic targets.

Climate Change Commission recommendations around the rapid adoption of electric vehicles, reduction in animal stocking rates and changing land use towards forestry and horticulture provide some key places to focus on.

As COP26 begins, New Zealand should announce a more ambitious climate pledge, one stringent enough to meet the 1.5℃ target. Announcing a sufficiently bold NDC at COP26 will provide much-needed leadership and encouragement for other countries to follow suit.

It will also act as a clear signpost for what our domestic emissions policies are aiming for, by when and why. But, no matter what New Zealand’s revised NDC says, much work will remain to ensure we make good on our commitments and give the climate crisis the attention it demands.

Dr Nathan Cooper is associate professor of law, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The Pacific Islands are at the frontline of climate change. But as rising seas threaten their very existence, these tiny nation states will not be submerged without a fight.

For decades this group has been the world’s moral conscience on climate change. Pacific leaders are not afraid to call out the climate policy failures of far bigger nations, including regional neighbour Australia.

And they have a strong history of punching above their weight at United Nations climate talks — including at Paris, where they were credited with helping secure the first truly global climate agreement.

• READ MORE: Australia ranks last out of 54 nations on its strategy to cope with climate change. The Glasgow summit is a chance to protect us all
• Who’s who in Glasgow: 5 countries that could make or break the planet’s future under climate change
• Scotland readies for COP26 spotlight

The momentum is with Pacific island countries at next month’s summit in Glasgow, and they have powerful friends. The United Kingdom, European Union and United States all want to see warming limited to 1.5℃.

This powerful alliance will turn the screws on countries dragging down the global effort to avert catastrophic climate change. And if history is a guide, the Pacific won’t let the actions of laggard nations go unnoticed.

A long fight for survival
Pacific leaders’ agitation for climate action dates back to the late 1980s, when scientific consensus on the problem emerged. The leaders quickly realised the serious implications global warming and sea-level rise posed for island countries.

Some Pacific nations — such as Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu — are predominantly low-lying atolls, rising just metres above the waves. In 1991, Pacific leaders declared “the cultural, economic and physical survival of Pacific nations is at great risk”.

Successive scientific assessments clarified the devastating threat climate change posed for Pacific nations: more intense cyclones, changing rainfall patterns, coral bleaching, ocean acidification, coastal inundation and sea-level rise.

Pacific states developed collective strategies to press the international community to take action. At past UN climate talks, they formed a diplomatic alliance with island nations in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, which swelled to more than 40 countries.

The first draft of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol – which required wealthy nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – was put forward by Nauru on behalf of this Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

Securing a global agreement in Paris
Pacific states were also crucial in negotiating a successor to the Kyoto Protocol in Paris in 2015.

By this time, UN climate talks were stalled by arguments between wealthy nations and developing countries about who was responsible for addressing climate change, and how much support should be provided to help poorer nations to deal with its impacts.

In the months before the Paris climate summit, then Marshall Islands Foreign Minister, the late Tony De Brum, quietly coordinated a coalition of countries from across traditional negotiating divides at the UN.

This was genius strategy. During talks in Paris, membership of this “High Ambition Coalition” swelled to more than 100 countries, including the European Union and the United States, which proved vital for securing the first truly global climate agreement.

When then US President Barack Obama met with island leaders in 2016, he noted “we could not have gotten a Paris Agreement without the incredible efforts and hard work of island nations”.

The High Ambition Coalition secured a shared temperature goal in the Paris Agreement, for countries to limit global warming to 1.5℃ above the long-term average. This was no arbitrary figure.

Scientific assessments have clarified 1.5℃ warming is a key threshold for the survival of vulnerable Pacific Island states and the ecosystems they depend on, such as coral reefs.

De Brum took a powerful slogan to Paris: “1.5 to stay alive”.

The Glasgow summit is the last chance to keep 1.5℃ of warming within reach. But Australia – almost alone among advanced economies – is taking to Glasgow the same 2030 target it took to Paris six years ago.

This is despite the Paris Agreement requirement that nations ratchet up their emissions-reduction ambition every five years.

Australia is the largest member of the Pacific Islands Forum (an intergovernmental group that aims to promote the interests of countries and territories in the Pacific). But it is also a major fossil fuel producer, putting it at odds with other Pacific countries on climate.

When Australia announced its 2030 target, De Brum said if the rest of the world followed suit:

the Great Barrier Reef would disappear […] so would the Marshall Islands and other vulnerable nations.

Influence at Glasgow
So what can we expect from Pacific leaders at the Glasgow summit? The signs so far suggest they will demand COP26 deliver an outcome to once and for all limit global warming to 1.5℃.

At pre-COP discussions in Milan earlier this month, vulnerable nations proposed countries be required to set new 2030 targets each year until 2025 — a move intended to bring global ambition into alignment with a 1.5℃ pathway.

COP26 president Alok Sharma says he wants the decision text from the summit to include a new agreement to keep 1.5℃ within reach.

This sets the stage for a showdown. Major powers like the US and the EU are set to work with large negotiating blocs, like the High Ambition Coalition, to heap pressure on major emitters that have yet to commit to serious 2030 ambition – including China, India, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Australia.

The chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, has warned Pacific island countries “refuse to be the canary in the world’s coal mine”.

According to Bainimarama:

by the time leaders come to Glasgow, it has to be with immediate and transformative action […] come with commitments for serious cuts in emissions by 2030 – 50 percent or more. Come with commitments to become net-zero before 2050. Do not come with excuses. That time is past.

Dr Wesley Morgan, researcher, Climate Council, and research fellow, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The head of the Pacific Islands Forum says New Zealand’s climate aid boost augurs well heading into COP26, and is pushing all developed countries to meet climate funding commitments made in Paris in 2015.

New Zealand announced yesterday that it was committing NZ$1.3 billion over four years to support countries most vulnerable to climate change.

Over half of the money is to go to the Pacific.

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New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister James Shaw described it as finance that is necessary to support some of the most vulnerable countries in the world to adapt to the effects of climate change.

After all, New Zealand committed to making such finance available as part of it signing up to the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

With the aid announcement coming ahead of the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, at the end of this month, Shaw hopes it can help repair some of the frayed consensus around the Paris Agreement.

“Because the fact is that the developed world has not delivered on that commitment to collectively mobilise US$100 billion a year [in annual climate finance].”

‘Suspicion and breakdown’
“That has led to a suspicion and a breakdown in relationships between the wealthier countries of the world, of which New Zealand is one, and the other countries.”

The Pacific Forum’s Secretary-General, Henry Puna, is heartened by the level of support.

“I’m totally ecstatic on behalf of the region at the New Zealand announcement,” he told RNZ Pacific.

“Yet at the same time, urgent ambitious climate action and finance are the two hinges open on a net zero, 1.5 degree future. But time is running out.”

Puna said he was hopeful that all developed countries would finally fulfill the funding commitments that they had made in Paris but had largely failed to meet.

“And I think the US has already set the tone; and the announcement — although not on the same issue — by China that they’re also coming to the party, augurs well for COP26.

He said the Pacific Islands region’s representatives would be heading to Glasgow in hopeful but resolute mode.

“But we’re certainly going there with full determination to try and talk to developed countries to support the commitments that we already made in 2015 in Paris.”

According to Shaw, the climate funding will be directed in three areas:

• to support adaptation efforts;
• to support Pacific countries to reduce carbon emissions themselves;
• and to support climate change capacity and capabilities — this could include investment in ocean science, and preparing for climate-related migration.

Finance allocation to be Pacific-led, needs-based
Shaw said the funding will be on top of New Zealand’s existing aid programme.

The government is not yet being too prescriptive on categorisation of the adaptation efforts it will finance, with Shaw saying they would prioritise on the basis of need.

He said New Zealand would be guided by Pacific Islands governments on where the climate aid is best directed.

“Last year the Fijian prime minister asked our government for help, as it undertakes the massive task of moving 42 villages further inland, away from rising waves,” Shaw explained.

“Many villages in low-lying countries like Tuvalu, Tokelau and Kiribati have no further inland that they can go. They must adapt to the massive changes that are upon them.”

But Dr Luke Harrington, a senior research fellow at the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute, says in terms of the country’s overseas aid contributions the aid boost is not enough

“All OECD countries have a target of about 0.7 percent of our gross national income. New Zealand sort of sits at the moments at about 0.27 percent. So that’s about an annual shortfall of $1.2 billion.”

However, Shaw said the funding boost could make a real difference.

“The Cook Islands estimate that about 25 percent of their annual budget is spent on climate-related costs — whether that’s cleaning up after the last cyclone or trying to build stronger and better infrastructure and housing to resist the next cyclone.”

Still, the minister conceded that the new climate aid package was no substitute for significant reductions to carbon emissions, and on this front as well, few countries have done what is required.

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

The climate is changing, faster than we thought – and humans have caused it. Last night, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the most comprehensive report on climate change ever – with hundreds of scientists taking part.

It says human activity is “unequivocally” driving the warming of atmosphere, ocean and land. The report projects that in the coming decades climate changes will increase in all regions.

Lead author on the paper, Associate Professor Amanda Maycock of Leeds University, told RNZ Morning Report the study gave governments a range of scenarios on what the world would look like with action and without it.

• READ MORE: UN sounds ‘code red for humanity’ warning over irreversible climate impact
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• LISTEN: ‘It’s a fact that climate change is happening and it is affecting every region of the world already today’ – Report author Dr Amanda Maycock
• LISTEN: ‘I think the message is we need to work as hard as we can to get the emissions to zero as quickly as we can” – Climate scientist Professor James Renwick
• LISTEN: ‘They’ve had their Climate Commission report. We need the debate in Parliament. Now we need to commit to a realistic target and then we need some big action’ – Professor Bronwyn Hayward
• LISTEN: ‘Our country has deferred action on climate change for the better part of 30 years’ – Climate Change Minister James Shaw
• The full sixth IPCC report

“The new scenarios that we present in the report today span a range of different possible futures, so they range all the way from making very rapid, immediate and large-scale cuts in greenhouse gas emissions all the way up to a very pessimistic scenario where we don’t make any efforts to mitigate emissions at all.

“So we provide the government with a range of possible outcomes. Now in those five scenarios that we assess in each one of them, it’s expected that the 1.5 degree temperature threshold will either be reached or exceeded in the next 20-year period,” she said.

“However, importantly, the very low emission scenario that we assess — the one where we would reach net zero emissions by the middle of this century — it reaches 1.5 degrees, it may overshoot by a very small amount, possibly about 0.1 of a degree Celsius, but later on in the century the temperature would come back down again and it would start to fall and it would stabilise below the 1.5 degree threshold.

“So based on the scenarios that we present, there is still a route for us to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, to limit temperature (rises) to 1.5 degrees Celsius (on average).

“The publication of today’s report is extremely timely ahead of the COP 26 [climate change conference in Glasgow] meeting because it really does set out in starker terms than ever before that climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today. The climate is already changing and its impacts are being experienced everywhere on on the planet already.

‘Climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today. The climate is already changing and its impacts are being experienced everywhere on on the planet already.’

— Dr Amanda Maycock

“So that serves, I think, as very good motivation for the negotiations that will happen at COP 26. We’ve seen in recent years several countries making commitments in law to reach net zero emissions by mid-century, including New Zealand, and so we will see in November when the meeting takes place, how the other countries react to what the is presented in the working group one report today.

“It’s a fact that climate change is happening and it is affecting every region of the world already today. So we’re seeing, you know, every year in different parts of the world we see record breaking heatwaves taking place.

“We see increasingly severe events that are connected to climate change. You know, high rainfall events and flooding, wildfire events, which are often associated and exacerbated by extreme heat and drought, and these are happening all around us all of the time now.

“So this was what was predicted by the IPCC over many decades, the IPCC’s been saying for a long time now that climate change is happening but the impacts will become more severe as the warming continues to increase and that is what we are now seeing today.

The New Zealand context
Climate scientist and report co-author Professor James Renwick of Victoria University told Morning Report “the so-called real time attribution science — being able to use models to look at events pretty much as they happen and work out the fingerprint of climate change — has advanced so much in the last five to 10 years now, this information is incorporated into the report.

“So yes, we know that a lot of these extreme events that have been happening lately have been made worse by the changing climate.

“We’ve had just over a degree of warming so far, and you know, we see the consequences of that. Add another half a degree or another whole degree. It’s actually hard to imagine just how bad it could get it.

“I think the message is we need to work as hard as we can to get the emissions to zero as quickly as we can.

“This report is the most definite of any of the IPCC reports. There’s no hedging around that climate change is definitely happening. Human activity is definitely the cause is driving all of the change.

“The messages in a way the same as we’ve had from the IPCC for 20 years, 30 years even and yet the action hasn’t come through at the political level – we really are at the sort of last gasp stage if we’re going to stop the warming at some kind of manageable level, we need the action now.

The best technologies for avoiding the impact of climate change were still reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by switching to renewable energy and planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide, Dr Renwick said.

“So the faster we can reduce our use of oil and coal, the better everyone is going to be and hopefully some of these new [geo-engineering] technologies will prove useful. But there’s nothing on the table right now that looks particularly promising.”

How we should respond
University of Canterbury’s Professor Bronwyn Hayward, a member of the IPCC core writing team, told Morning Report there would be “huge pressure on large and developed countries” ahead of the Glasgow climate change conference in November.

“I think the problem for New Zealand is that we are still using a climate target that was set two governments ago. It doesn’t meet the Paris Agreement,” she said.

“If the rest of the world did what we were doing, we’d be well over 3 degrees warmer. So we really just need to not wait to November to make a nice speech in Glasgow. There’s nothing stopping the government.

“They’ve had their Climate Commission report. We need the debate in Parliament. Now we need to commit to a realistic target and then we need some big action.

“The Climate Commission has said that we should be saying at least 36 percent cuts or much more, actually if we can, on the amount of emissions we were making back in 2005.

“But we also need a covid-like response. I think now we could really do with a popular public servant like Bloomfield to lead it, but we need a whole of government response where we are having regular reports where we’re bringing together what we’re doing on our emissions reduction and to protect people.

“So we need to see some big cuts [in emissions]. For example in transport and to be bold about this, like what would stop the government from actually supporting Auckland to provide all free public buses and congestion charging?

“I mean, make some big bold steps…

“At the moment we’re kind of keeping on treating climate as if it’s something about reducing climate through carbon changes, but it’s social actions as well, so investing in new jobs.

“So bring the thinking together, bring our Ministry of Social Development in with our Ministry for the Environment and really start thinking ‘what does a new lower carbon economy actually look like that works for people?’.

“There’s always a place for an Emissions Trading Scheme, but we have relied on that only for 30 years and we actually have to also, at the same time make real and concrete and rapid changes where we can … we need to be really planning, not just changing our market systems, but actually planning for concrete infrastructure and housing and city changes that are real on the ground and actually doing them now.

‘A catastrophe unfolding’
Minister for Climate Change and Green Party co-leader James Shaw said the key takeaway from the report was that the effects of climate change were happening now.

“It’s not something that’s going to be happening in the future somewhere else to somebody else. It is happening to us, and there’s a catastrophe that’s unfolding here in Aotearoa as well as to our nearest neighbours in Australia. And we can see that in that kind of wildfires and so on that they have every year and in the Pacific, where the rate of sea level rise is higher than just about anywhere else in the world,” he said.

“It just underscores the incredible urgency and the scale with which we need to act.

Despite the need to reduce emissions, agriculture – which contributes almost 50 percent of the country’s greenhouse gases – will not be included in the Emissions Trading Scheme until 2025.

Even then, it will be at a 95 percent discount – but Shaw said that was the “backup plan”.

“So what we’re doing is we’re building a farm level measurement management and pricing scheme for agriculture, and we’re actually the first country in the world to put in place a way of pricing agricultural emissions… you know, just because the pricing isn’t kicking in until the 1st of January 2025, people need to be reducing their emissions now.”

As for transport – which contributes 20 percent of Aotearoa’s greenhouse gas emissions – a shift to electric cars was important but so was mode shift, Shaw said.

“We need people to be able to access opportunities for walking, cycling, public transport and so on as well. And we know that our existing fleet of internal combustion engine vehicles is going to still be used for quite a long time because we hold on to our cars for a long time.

“That’s why we’re bring in a biofuels mandate to make sure that every litre of petrol sold has a biofuels component to it that will increase over time.

“But transport is the one area in our economy that has just been growing relentlessly for decades and we have to turn it around.”

“Our country has deferred action on climate change for the better part of 30 years. And what that means is that there is a much steeper curve that we are facing in front of us and [it is] much harder to do, given that we’ve waited so long to get started.”

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

The chair of the Pacific Islands Forum has welcomed the re-entry of the United States to the Paris agreement over climate change.

Within hours of his taking the oath as the 46th US President, Joe Biden issued an executive order for the US to return to the Paris Agreement.

Forum Chair Kausea Natano, who is Tuvalu’s prime minister, said the US order as a priority was warmly appreciated in the Pacific.

• READ MORE: Biden moves to have US rejoin Paris Accord, halt Arctic leasing

Natano said he looked forward to continued and strengthened relationships between the people of the Pacific and the US, especially on the climate crisis facing the “Blue Pacific”.

He said the international community must use the positive development to inject greater urgency to climate action on the Paris goal of limiting global warming increase to within 1.5-degrees celsius

“The announcement comes at a time when the world is faced with a multitude of hazards including covid-19,” Natano said.

“Our Blue Pacific faces a climate change crisis that threatens our future prosperity and the move by President Biden and his administration to bring the US back to the Paris Agreement is warmly welcomed and appreciated.

“We look forward to working closely with President Biden and his administration, with urgency and shared values for a safe and secure future for our great Blue Planet.”

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

Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path

Two weeks after the storming of the US Capitol by the followers of his predecessor, in the middle of an out-of-control pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 Americans, Joe Biden — the 46th president of the US — tried to contain the blaze in his inaugural address.

As aspiration, the speech was pitch perfect. Biden rightly took on the present of America’s most serious domestic crisis since the Civil War. Coronavirus, the Capitol attack, economic loss, immigration, climate change and social injustice were confronted:

We’ll press forward with speed and urgency for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibility. Much to do, much to heal, much to restore, much to build and much to gain.

• READ MORE: Who’s who in Joe Biden’s cabinet

But what distinguished the speech beyond the essential was the sincerity with which it was delivered. Since the election, there has been a commingling of Biden’s personal narrative of loss with the damage that America has suffered.

When he spoke of the “empty chair” and relatives who have died, it was from the heart and not just the script.

So, as he said in front of the Capitol: “My whole soul is in this”, there was no doubt — in contrast to the statements of his predecessor — that it is.

Complementing Biden’s rhetoric are the executive orders and legislation set out in the days before the inauguration. Immigration reform will be accompanied by protection of almost 800,000 young Dreamers from deportation.

There is a mandate to reunite children separated from parents and a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

The US has rejoined the Paris Accords on climate change. The “Muslim Ban” is rescinded, Donald Trump’s wall with Mexico suspended. And coronavirus will finally be confronted with coordination between the federal, state and local governments and a US$1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan”.

Words to a waiting world
But where is America in the world in all this? In Biden’s attention to domestic crises, there was little beyond his intention to re-engage with the world on climate and reverse the previous administration’s myopic immigration measures.

Even the invocations of American greatness, with one exception, stayed within its borders:

Through a crucible for the ages, America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge.

There is historical precedent for the exclusive focus on home. In 1933, as the Great Depression raged, Franklin Delano Roosevelt also made no reference to the world as he said at his first inauguration:

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Perhaps even more pertinently, in 1865, Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, a month before his assassination and two months before the end of the Civil War:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.

Beyond the inaugural, there are clues in Biden’s appointment of Obama-era pragmatists: Antony Blinken as secretary of state, Jake Sullivan as national security advisor, John Kerry in a special post for climate change. There will be no sweeping “Biden Doctrine”, nor a grand speech such as Barack Obama’s in Cairo or Ankara in 2009.

Instead, the pragmatists will try to restore alliances, reestablish the “rules of the game” with countries such as China, Russia and North Korea — and work case-by-case on immediate issues such as the Iran nuclear deal.

But for this day, and for the weeks and months to come, the foreign challenges will primarily be an extension of the domestic issues that Biden set out on “America’s day … democracy’s day”.

Recovery of America’s damaged standing will come from success in putting out the fires that are not just in the US: saving lives and vanquishing a virus, committing to a secure environment, tackling the inequities and divisions in the way of justice for all.

For as the world watched, Biden’s exceptional reference to an aspiration beyond the US came in his penultimate paragraph about the “American story” to be written:

That America secured liberty at home and stood once again as a beacon to the world. That is what we owe our forebears, one another, and generations to follow.

By Scott Lucas, professor of international politics, University of Birmingham. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

When the US formally left the Paris climate agreement, Joe Biden tweeted that “in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it”.

The US announced its intention to withdraw from the agreement back in 2017. But the agreement’s complex rules meant formal notification could only be sent to the United Nations last year, followed by a 12-month notice period — hence the long wait.

While diplomacy via Twitter looks here to stay, global climate politics is about to be upended — and the impacts will be felt in Australia if President-elect Biden delivers on his plans.

• READ MORE: New polling shows 79% of Aussies care about climate change. So why doesn’t the government listen?
  

Under the Biden administration, the US will have the most progressive position on climate change in the nation’s history. Biden has already laid out a US$2 trillion clean energy and infrastructure plan, a commitment to rejoin the Paris agreement and a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

As Biden said back in July when he announced the plan:

If I have the honour of being elected president, we’re not just going to tinker around the edges. We’re going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity, meet this moment in history.

And his plan is historic. It aims to achieve a power sector that’s free from carbon pollution by 2035 — in a country with the largest reserves of coal on the planet.

Biden also aims to revitalise the US auto industry and become a leader in electric vehicles, and to upgrade four million buildings and two million homes over four years to meet new energy efficiency standards.

Can he do it under a a divided Congress?
With the US elections outcome, Democrats control the presidency and the House, but not the Senate.

This means President-elect Biden will be able to rejoin the Paris agreement, which does not require Senate ratification. But any attempt to legislate a carbon price will be blocked in the Senate, as it was when then-President Barack Obama introduced the Waxman-Markey bill in 2010.

In any case, there’s no reason to think a carbon price is a silver bullet, given the window to act on climate change is closing fast.

What’s needed are ambitious targets and mandates for the power sector, transport sector and manufacturing sector, backed up with billions in government investment.

Fortunately, this is precisely what Biden is promising to do. And he can do it without the Senate by using the executive powers of the US government to implement a raft of new regulatory measures.

Take the transport sector as an example. His plan aims to set “ambitious fuel economy standards” for cars, set a goal that all American-built buses be zero emissions by 2030, and use public money to build half a million electric vehicle charging stations. Most of these actions can be put in place through regulations that don’t require congressional approval.

And with Trump out of the White House, California will be free to achieve its target that all new cars be zero emissions by 2035, which the Trump administration had impeded.

If that sounds far-fetched, given Australia is the only OECD country that still doesn’t have fuel efficiency standards for cars, keep in mind China promised to do the same thing as California last week.

What does this mean for Australia?
For the last four years, the Trump administration has been a boon for successive Australian governments as they have torn up climate policies and failed to implement new ones.

Rather than witnessing our principal ally rebuke us on home soil, as Obama did at the University of Queensland in 2014, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has instead benefited from a cosy relationship with a US president who regularly dismisses decades of climate science, as he does medical science. And people are dying as a result.

Obama on climate change at the University of Queensland.

For Australia, the ambitious climate policies of a Biden administration means in every international negotiation our diplomats turn up to, climate change will not only be top of the agenda, but we will likely face constant criticism.

Indeed, fireside chats in the White House will come with new expectations that Australia significantly increases its ambitions under the Paris agreement. Committing to a net zero emissions target will be just the first.

The real kicker, however, will be Biden’s trade agenda, which supports carbon tariffs on imports that produce considerable carbon pollution. The US is still Australia’s third-largest trading partner after China and Japan — who, by the way, have just announced net zero emissions targets themselves.

Should the US start hitting Australian goods with a carbon fee at the border, you can bet Australian business won’t be happy, and Morrison may begin to re-think his domestic climate calculus.

And what political science tells us is if international pressure doesn’t shift a country’s position on climate change, domestic pressure certainly will.

With Biden now in the White House, it’s not just global climate politics that will be turned on its head. Australia’s failure to implement a serious domestic climate and energy policy could have profound costs.

Costs, mind you, that are easily avoidable if Australia acts on climate change, and does so now.

Dr Christian Downie is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at the Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama is reported to have become the first world leader to publicly congratulate US President-elect Joe Biden on his victory – despite there being no clear winner yesterday morning when he did so.

Bainimarama took to Twitter on Saturday to express his well wishes to Biden and called on him to work toward tackling climate change, which is a major problem for Fiji and Pacific nations, reports Newsweek.

“Congratulations, @JoeBiden,” Bainimarama wrote. “Together, we have a planet to save from a #ClimateEmergency and a global economy to build back better from #COVID19. Now, more than ever, we need the USA at the helm of these multilateral efforts (and back in the #ParisAgreement — ASAP!)”

• READ MORE: Joe Biden wins – says time for the US to ‘unite’
• Iran, Britain, France, rest of world welcome Biden’s victory
• Biden promises to be president for all Americans
• Kamala Harris makes history as first ‘Madam Vice-President’
• ‘You’re fired’: Trump on way out – and here’s how Twitter responded
• More Asia Pacific Report stories on the US elections

Biden has said he would rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement if he became president, saying the US would reverse President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the accord immediately after his inauguration.

Biden was declared victorious early today after successfully overturning his hometown state of Pennsylvania, giving him enough electoral college votes to surpass the required 270. Nevada was also declared for Biden a short time later.

Bainimarama has been Fiji’s prime minister since 2007, serving as acting prime minister from 2007 to 2014 following his 2006 military coup.

Congratulations, @JoeBiden.

Together, we have a planet to save from a #ClimateEmergency and a global economy to build back better from #COVID19.

Now, more than ever, we need the USA at the helm of these multilateral efforts (and back in the #ParisAgreement — ASAP!) pic.twitter.com/mhX9HWR5HI

— Frank Bainimarama (@FijiPM) November 7, 2020

Fiji was the first country to ratify the Paris Climate Agreement.

Bainimarama was not the first world leader to offer congratulations on the outcome of the 2020 election. Slovenia Prime Minister Janez Janša congratulated President Donald Trump for his false declaration of “victory” on November 5, according to Newsweek.

Janša’s tweet prompted criticism from some members of the European Parliament, while his claim that Trump would win the election was premature and mistaken.

It is common for world leaders to congratulate newly-elected presidents but most heads of government and heads of state wait until the election is concluded.

Ardern offers congratulations
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern shared a message of congratulations for Biden on his victory over Donald Trump.

“New Zealand will continue to work side-by-side with the United States on the issues that matter to both of us, including the prosperity, security, and sustainability in the Indo-Pacific and Pacific Island regions.”

Joe Biden is almost certain to be the next president of the United States, ushering in a welcome return to engagement with the climate crisis after four years of denial. Great news for the Pacific.

In contrast with Donald Trump’s premature declaration of victory and desperate calls to “stop the count”, Biden is modelling patience, with around 10 percent of ballots still to be tallied.

But he let his confidence in the eventual outcome show with a tweet promising his White House will rejoin the Paris Agreement, 77 days after the official exit of the United States, reports Climate Change News.

• READ MORE: Biden to address US, takes slim lead in Georgia, Pennsylvania
• US networks pull the plug on Trump’s live address due to ‘lies’
• Landslide that wasn’t: What the elections say about America – by Marwan Bishara
• Other Asia Pacific Reports on the US elections

That is the easy part. Much harder will be delivering emissions cuts, after disappointing Senate results for the Democrats.

They could yet scrape a majority — subject to a January run-off in Georgia — but do not have the 60 seats needed to pass a framework climate law.

A Biden administration will have to get creative to submit a credible 2030 climate target to the UN next year, as required under Paris.

Biden made climate change a cornerstone of his vision to recover the American economy from the impacts of covid-19, with a US$2 trillion plan to drive green investments and create jobs, reports Chloé Farand of Climate Change News.

Blue wave never materialised
But the blue wave Democrats hoped for in the Senate has failed to materialise, dampening Biden’s prospects of passing climate legislation.

While Democrats are confident they will retain control of the House of Representatives, the Senate election is down to the wire, with both sides having 48 seats as of Friday.

The contest is so tight, the Senate majority could be determined on January 5 in a hotly contested special election for at least one, and maybe two seats in Georgia.

Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it. https://t.co/L8UJimS6v2

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 5, 2020

Even with a slim majority in the Senate, Biden would need some Republican support to pass climate legislation. Under US Senate rules, policy changes beyond spending and taxation require at least 60 of the 100 senators to agree to move the issue to a vote.

Bipartisan backing will be required to introduce a clean electricity standard, for example, which would mandate a transition to zero carbon electricity generation by 2035 and help deliver on a campaign promise. So would a carbon pricing mechanism.

“Control of the Senate will have a huge impact on climate policy in the US,” said Jamie Henn, cofounder of US environmental group 350.org.

“There’s little hope for passing sweeping climate legislation if [Republican majority leader] Mitch McConnell keeps his claws on the gavel. There’s a lot the president can do through executive authority, but to really rise to the scale of this crisis, we need the votes in the Senate.”

Without congressional backing, “a sweeping economic regeneration policy… will not happen in the next two years,” said Nathan Hultman, director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland.

“Then we have to look at it as a stage process.”

Republished with permission from Climate Change News.

Talks to draft the Paris Agreement rulebook remained deadlocked today on traditionally tough issues.

Emerging economies – China, India, Brazil and South Africa – stood their ground on financial aid and the division of rich and poor countries.

Others vented their frustration. The UN chief flew back to Poland with a message that failure would be “immoral” and “suicidal”, Fiji’s prime minister said it would be “craven, irresponsible and selfish”, and a coalition of countries born in the Paris talks in 2015 was resurrected, with a call to arms.

READ MORE: Make the ‘clean energy’ switch, urges Fiji’s Bainimarama

Businesses are outpacing national governments in rolling out zero emission vehicles across Europe, North America and New Zealand, says The Climate Group as another five leading companies have joined its corporate leadership initiative EV100 and pledged to electrify their fleets by 2030.

A push has emerged in Poland for countries to step up their climate pledges and Megan Darby of Climate Home News interviews one of the scientists whose work made the world realise it is on the brink.

With new draft rules written by the Polish Cop24 presidency in hand by yesterday afternoon, and many issues still to be resolved, countries and groups came out swinging for their demands.

For the four Basic emerging economies – Brazil, South Africa, India and China – it’s all about differentiating their responsibilities from those of rich countries, and firming up the latter’s commitments to provide financial aid.

Commitments not fully met
“There’s a bit of concern that financial commitments, as agreed to in Paris, have not yet fully been met,” said South African tourism minister Tokozile Xasa.

“It’s quite clear, the evidence shows, that not only do we need reliability in the available finance to support of the initiatives, but that the amount allocated is hopelessly inadequate.”

On the question of how the rulebook applies to countries, the group stressed that the Paris Agreement gives developing countries more leniency as they build up abilities to, for instance, track and report emissions.

“There has to be some degree of flexible reassertion of the differentiated approach … and the allowance made for developing countries,” Xasa said.

Is also another man’s Paris Agreement. The Basic group argued that inserting “equal treatment” of developed and developing countries into the rulebook would amount to a “backslide” on the accord.

EU Climate Action Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete countered that the Paris Agreement called for a more flexible differentiation than the developed/developing line of the 1990s.

“We fully respect what we agreed in Paris, but Paris also points out … that we have to have an enhanced transparency system with built-in flexibilities,” he said.

Countries that need flexibility should get it, while their capabilities are built up, he added.

The Green Climate Fund has extended its search for a new executive director to 3 January. Climate Home News understands big hitters like Nigerian former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and UN desertification chief Monique Barbut have been encouraged to apply, but many potential candidates are deterred by the Songdo location.

• More climate stories

Two significant events happened at the 49th Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) earlier this month – climate change and ratification of the Boe agreement (a regional security pact that succeeded the 2000 Biketawa agreement), says Barbara Dreaver, a veteran journalist with 20 years’ experience covering the Pacific.

Dreaver made headlines herself by being detained and questioned for four hours after interviewing an asylum seeker from a detention centre on Nauru.

The centres were declared a forbidden area when Nauru approved journalists’ accreditation for the forum on September 3-6.

READ MORE: Climate change, at the frontlines

Initially, Nauru revoked Dreaver’s accreditation but reinstated it, so she could cover the forum proper, and she did not allow it to detract from doing her job.

Climate change is a growing burden for the Pacific and was the key discussion point at the forum.

Central to this is the demand by the Pacific Island countries that the United States return to the Paris climate agreement of 2015.

In short, the Paris Agreement is an ambition to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C – and to limit the increase to 1.5 °C – as called for by the smaller island states at the forum.

Plea to the US
“Pacific leaders have also called on the US to return to the Paris agreement,” says Barbara Dreaver.

The call comes on the back of US President Donald Trump announcing his intention in June 2017 to withdraw. Under the agreement, the earliest possible withdrawal date for the US is November 2020, although moves have been afoot for the US administration to withdraw from the agreement.

Climate change has become such an important problem for Pacific Island nations that it had to take centre stage at the forum.

“Yes, this was the main thrust of the forum. The leaders have formally requested the United Nations appoint a special adviser on climate change and security and they have also called on the UN Security Council to appoint a special rapporteur to produce a regular review of global, regional and national security threats caused by climate change,” Dreaver told Asia Pacific Report.

Most of the controversy at the forum centred around Nauru, which was once a phosphate-mining mecca now virtually stripped dry and reduced to playing an off-shore role as a detention centre for asylum seekers to Australia.

Nauru is set to receive nearly A$26 million from Australia in Official Development Assistance  in 2018-19, which is almost a quarter of its gross domestic product.

“The money Nauru receives from Australia is valuable to this cash-strapped nation. It’s not only in cash terms – buildings have been improved etc. For Nauru, while it’s a headache, it’s also a godsend,” says Dreaver.

Sensitive refugee discussions
Sensitive discussions around the detainees did take place under muted conditions and away from the media, she noted.

“The discussion around the detainees on Nauru took place in the bilaterals and only at a general level.

“There was some sensitivity given it’s a domestic issue for the most part and Nauru had made it clear it did not consider it part of the forum – even if others did.

“It should be noted that the bigger non-government organisations like World Vision or Amnesty, which would have brought up the issue at side events [civil society discussions)] were refused visas to Nauru.”

Incarcerated children on the island, kept in conditions widely considered inhumane, hardly rated a mention at the forum.

“The children on Nauru are staying put – I understand there are now approximately 109 of them,” says Dreaver.

An Australian decision
New Zealand did discuss the potential resettlement of some of the asylum seekers but were told it was an Australian decision.

“Jacinda Ardern (Prime Minister) discussed it with Nauru at the bilateral discussions but at the end of the day, if Australia doesn’t agree with the transferral of refugees to NZ it won’t happen. The decision is not the Nauru governments’ to make,” says Dreaver.

That was not to say New Zealand did not have a contribution to make at the PIF, even though one commentator in New Zealand likened Pacific countries to “leeches”.

“Most of New Zealand’s contribution was behind the scenes. For example, like some of the other member countries it had input on the Biketawa Plus or Boe Declaration,” she said.

“New Zealand’s presence must not be underestimated… the only times a New Zealand Prime Minister has not attended a forum has been when it has been close to an election.

“While fellow leaders have always publicly expressed their understanding, they have also made it clear New Zealand is missed and it doesn’t go down well.

“New Zealand is strong on fisheries in the region and its input in this area is strong,” she says on a food source that is dear to the heart of all Pacific Islanders.

Climate change priority
Again, there was no getting away from climate change and the security of the region, as Dreaver points out.

“Yes, the Boe declaration was ratified (named Boe as this is name of the President of Nauru’s [Baron Waqa] village where it was signed).

“The leaders had to go back to the table in the evening as Australia had some concerns over the language about climate change which other leaders describe as the single greatest threat to the region.

“There is a strong agreement for resources for cash-strapped nations, particularly in the area of cybercrime – it’s expected New Zealand and Australia will provide specialist and technical knowledge to help small island nations combat this,’’ Dreaver says.

Progress was made at the 49th sitting of the Pacific Islands Forum despite it being held in the controversial venue of Nauru.

Sri Krishnamurthi is a journalist and Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies student at Auckland University of Technology. He is attached to the University of the South Pacific’s Journalism Programme, filing for USP’s Wansolwara News and the AUT Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Report.

Three hundred schoolchildren from the greater Jakarta area sat on a red carpet covering the cavernous Soedjarwo auditorium—named to honour the country’s first forestry minister—at the Ministry of the Environment and Forestry in January this year.

They were there to participate in the government-led Climate Festival; the theme was “Three Years of Climate Change Achievements”.

Dr Nur Masripatin, the then Director General of Climate Change (she stepped down in February 2018), tossed the kids a question on climate change: what will become of Indonesia if nothing is done about climate change by 2030?

An elementary schoolboy said the country would become hotter and drier. Another two students added to his answer, talking about global warming and the greenhouse gases that lead to climate change.

The director-general beamed broadly. Dr Nur Masripatin, who has a PhD in forest biometrics from Canterbury University in New Zealand, has been a veteran negotiator for Indonesia at the annual United Nations climate conference since 2005.

Indonesia is a country of islands, with a majority of the population living along coasts vulnerable to climate change, she explained to the assembled pupils. The government hopes that such an event will equip children with information on climate change that they’ll carry into adulthood.

Reaching Indonesia’s targets
The event also sought to inform the public on the progress made in implementing international agreements and national policies, such as the Paris Agreement and the Nationally Determined Contribution, related to climate change. Government projects such as this one are only deemed successful if the people meant to benefit from the project feel that they have a stake in the issue, and commit to seeing it through.

The Paris Agreement, reached at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015, is a legally binding international contract to limit global warming “well below” 2˚C, through lowering carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and the degrading of forests. The ultimate aim is zero carbon emissions worldwide by 2050.

In undertaking to realise the Paris Agreement, Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, sets a target of cutting emissions by 29 percent against a “business as usual” scenario (in which no planned action is taken) and by 41 percent with international cooperation. This climate action plan is due to be implemented from 2020 to 2030.

One of the many documents handed out to participants of the Climate Festival was the country’s NDC Implementation Strategy, listing nine programmes with assigned activities spanning from ownership and commitment development to implementation and review. Also included was an academic paper on the draft government regulation for climate change.

The festival, and its accompanying books, talks, and handout material produced by the director general and her team, outlines an ambitious climate agenda. Yet what’s not covered is interesting, too.

While the NDC Implementation Strategy cites projected greenhouse gas emission levels, it does not provide details on whether, or how much, emissions have already been reduced since 2011, when the government issued its national action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2020. Nor does the NDC explain the formula it uses to reduce emissions in the five slated sectors: land-use, energy, IPPU (industrial processes and product use), agriculture and waste. The first two sectors alone produced 82 percent of the country’s carbon emissions in 2010–2012.

Despite its absence in the Climate Festival’s documents, information on emission reduction is provided by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas). From 2010–2017, Indonesia has cut greenhouse gas emission by only 13.46 percent. It’s a figure the Indonesian government aren’t eager to publicise—it’s a long way from their target. The government doesn’t officially state how much carbon emissions has been reduced because the NDC does not start until 2020, a government official explained.

“The government shall regularly provide emission reduction achievements in line with the NDC target it has committed to after Indonesia ratified the Paris Agreement. This is in line with our commitment to the NDC up to 2030. The information can be accessed in SIGN SMART prepared by the Environment and Forestry Ministry,” says Dr Agus Justianto, Head of the Ministry’s Agency for Research, Development and Innovation.

A major emitter of greenhouse gases
According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), Indonesia is the world’s sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the largest contributor of forest-based emissions—an unsurprising fact if one thinks back to the devastating forest and peat fires in 2014 and 2015. Images from the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released in 2014 and 2015 show dense smoke blanketing parts of the country and its neighbours. Those two years were exceptionally bad, but such burning takes place annually.

In September 2017, WRI Indonesia published a 36-page working paper on how Indonesia can achieve its climate change mitigation goal. The organisation found that existing policies in the land-use and energy sectors, even if fully implemented, are inadequate if the country is really serious about reaching the 29% target by 2030. Using its own methodology, WRI Indonesia estimated that the existing policies would only result in a 19% reduction.

A failure to achieve its mitigation target means that Indonesia won’t be able to contribute its declared share in global fulfillment of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Rethinking policies
Reaching the NDC goal would require revisiting existing policies, particularly in agriculture and energy.

In agriculture, the government wants to double the output of the highly lucrative oil palm by 2020. This would require the clearing of more forest and peatland to add to the 14 million hectares of oil palm plantations already present in the country—a move that would surely lead to more carbon emissions. The policy also undermines a forest moratorium, in place since 2011, on the issuing of permits to convert primary forest and peatland to oil palm plantations, pulp and paper estates and other land-use change activities.

Dr Agus denies any planned clearing of peatland, insisting that the moratorium is still in place. What the government wants to increase, he stresses, is productivity per hectare on existing oil palm plantations.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo also has a plan to boost the country’s energy capacity by 35,000 megawatts during his current term, which comes to an end in 2019. Only 2000 megawatts of that energy will come from renewable energy; 20,000 megawatts will come from coal-fired plants, another major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Oil and gas, as well as hydropower, will provide the rest.

This matter of generating 20,000 megawatts of energy from coal-fired plants was put to Bambang Brodjonegoro, Indonesia’s Minister for National Development Planning and Head of Bappenas, at the Southeast Asia Symposium jointly organised by Oxford University and the University of Indonesia’s School of Environmental Science.

The “best solution”, advocated by environmentalists, would be to phase coal-fired plants out completely and embrace renewable energy sources. It’s in line with the call of the “Powering Past Coal” alliance, a partnership of over 20 governments who intend to move away from coal. No Southeast Asian government has joined the alliance thus far.

Brodjonegoro, a former dean of the University of Indonesia’s School of Economics, replied that Indonesia’s plan relies on the “second-best solution”: new coal-fired power plants will use clean coal technology, and that renewable energy, such as solar, wind or biomass, will be developed for isolated areas that are not yet part of the country’s power grid. Energy is required for economic growth, he argued, and Indonesia has abundant coal deposits to meet that energy need.

But Indonesia might not need as much energy as policymakers initially thought. According to the Electricity Supply Business Plan 2018-2027 drafted by the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, a projection in Indonesia’s additional power needs dropped from 78 gigawatts under the 2017–2026 plan to 56 gigawatts in the 2018–2027 plan. The decrease was due to overestimating the growth in demand; if the government had followed through with the initial plan, it would end up overspending by building unused power plants.

Plans are also underway to increase the portion of renewable energy—while renewable energy only provided 12.52 percent of Indonesia’s energy in 2017, it’s expected to rise to 23 percent in 2025. Coal is expected to decline as a source of energy from 58.3 percent in 2017 to 54.4 percent in 2025. But environmental groups say it’s still not good enough.

“Many nations like India, China and even Saudi Arabia have altered their investment direction to renewable energy, whereas Indonesia still depends on coal for more than 50 percent of its power source,” said Hindun Mulaika, Greenpeace Indonesia’s climate and energy campaigner, in a recent press release.

Other organisations have called for more ambitious action from the Indonesian government. Germanwatch and Climate Action Network pointed out in their 2018 Climate Change Performance Index that Indonesia has the potential to further develop renewable energy, particularly since it has relatively large amounts of hydropower. WRI Indonesia recommended other mitigation actions, such as strengthening and extending the forest moratorium, restoring degraded forest and peatland, and implementing energy conservation efforts.

According to WRI Indonesia, increasing renewable sources in the energy mix will require implementing multiple policies, such as a carbon tax on fossil fuel power plants, the replacement of coal-fired plants with wind or solar sources, and the provision of subsidies for the promotion of renewable energy.

Indonesia already has bilateral and multilateral agreements for cooperation in climate change, such as an accord with Norway signed in 2010, where the Scandinavian country pledged up to USD1 billion for “significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, forest degradation and peatland conversion”. The financial contribution is made based on a verified emissions reduction mechanism. However, an influential coal lobby makes it difficult for the country to take bolder steps away from coal power plants.

A target that cannot be achieved
As it stands, Indonesia’s 29 percent NDC target is not achievable, says a government technocrat.

“It is not based on what sectors knew, what the energy sector knew, what the road transport sector knew. No one has reliable data. Everyone has some sense of statistics,” says the technocrat, who has asked to remain anonymous as he’s not authorised to speak to the press.

The distinction between data and statistics is an important one—while statistics present a snapshot of one aspect of an issue, data is a real mapping of what exists, providing a more holistic picture. A good NDC should have reliable data from every sector, disaggregated to show the reality in each of Indonesia’s 465 sub-national districts and town governments. While there might be a political aspect to this process, politics should not be dominant, the official added.

“No one has reliable data. Everyone has some sense of statistics”

The lack of data is a big problem with a major impact on the way targets have been set. The government arrived at the 29% target via inter-sectoral meetings where each of the five mitigation sectors (energy, land-use, industry, agriculture, waste) stated how far they were willing to go in terms of reductions. But if the various groups only have “some sense of statistics” without actual reliable data, the targets set could easily be off the mark.

Hopes for a future generation
Indonesia’s climate future is not bleak; there’s still hope for significant progress moving forward. Beyond government policy and programmes, numerous civil society organisations are actively working on the issue.

One example is Climate Reality Indonesia, which had a booth at the Climate Festival. Its members, who have participated in Al Gore’s climate course, are from all walks of life: students, academics, public officials, business people, homemakers, journalists, artists, clerics. They’re committed to spreading climate awareness among their own circles to encourage a ripple effect that will increase public knowledge across the country.

“Climate change can be viewed from different angles: water, air, marine resources, forests, agriculture, energy, education, laws. Hence it’s important to break down the issue of interest to understand the ground sentiment,” says Amanda Katili Niode, manager of Climate Reality Indonesia.

There are signs that the public are interested. In 2015, a survey by the Pew Research Centre found that 63 percent of the country supported limiting greenhouse gas emissions as part of an international agreement. Climate Reality Indonesia is thus working on creating visual materials on specific climate change impacts and solutions to use in their outreach programmes.

Following Climate Change Director General Nur Masripatin’s session, Hidayatun Nisa, a 24-year-old university graduate, delivered a rousing speech before the assembled schoolchildren. She told them about her work as a facilitator in the Care of Peat Village project run by the Peat Restoration Agency in a village in Jambi province on the east coast of central Sumatra, calling on students to study how to protect the environment for a better future.

“I do hope the children can learn to be sensitive to living things and protect the environment where they live. This also applies to their parents as the educational process that has the greatest effect is the education at home,” says Nisa.

Without a change in gear for a more ambitious and robust emphasis on renewable energy and the safeguarding of the environment, Indonesia’s climate change ambitions could end up amounting to little more than a can’t-do plan. As it is, the current generation is already not on track to meet its own stipulated goals. If the country does not undertake a course correction soon, today’s Indonesian children will find themselves having to pick up the slack in the future.

Warief Djajanto Basorie is a contributor to New Naratif, an independent research and journalism publication. He has reported for the domestic KNI News Service in Jakarta 1971-1991 and concurrently was Indonesia correspondent for the Manila-based DEPTHnews Asia (DNA, 1974-1991). DNA is a feature service reporting on development in Asia for Asian media in English and the vernacular. This article is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

Concerns have emerged New Zealand may not meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement if a law on emissions is not enacted and soon.

This is the view of New Zealand’s Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, which was revealed in her final report ‘Stepping stones to Paris and beyond: Climate change, progress, and predictability’ released this week.

“There is no direct link between New Zealand climate policy and reaching the Paris target,” she says.

“My chief concern in this report is not the level of our targets, but the lack of a process for achieving them.”

Dr Wright therefore believes the government should take a note out of the UK’s book and implement a climate change act which puts emissions targets in legislation and sets up a process for reaching them.

This is because between 1990 and 2015 New Zealand’s emissions have risen by 64 per cent, while the UK’s have fallen by 38 per cent in the same period.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, New Zealand’s emissions should be 11 per cent below those of 1990 levels by 2030.

Paris target unreachable
But if the concerns raised in Dr Wright’s report are anything to go by, that target may not be reached.

Dr Wright herself acknowledges our 2030 greenhouse gas target may not be “ambitious enough” so charting a pathway to that target and beyond is the “bigger issue”.

So what would such a pathway look like?

Firstly, New Zealand’s emission targets would become law, with “carbon budgets” approximately every five years ensuring these targets are met.

An expert body would also be established to provide successive governments objective analysis and advice about how their targets are tracking and what steps could be taken to improve.

But Dr Wright warns this legislation must transcend the current government.

“Support across political parties is vital. Climate change is the ultimate inter-generational issue, and governments change.”

Climate ‘transcends governments’
As a result, Dr Wright sees the implementation of this act being via a “apolitical long-term approach”, which means businesses largely pick up the baton from government.

“Climate change transcends governments and our approach must do the same,” she says.

However, New Zealand currently has no strong policy on emissions or mitigating and adapting to climate change, Dr Wright says.

“Currently, New Zealand has no climate change target in law.”

This is also something climate change minister Paula Bennet herself has acknowledged.

She told The AM Show: “We’re just not quite there. I don’t think the time is right for us to be doing the legislation.”

New Zealand’s climate change policy is seen by some as ad hoc, so much so that a 26-year-old law student took the government to court in June over its climate policy “failure”.

Government ‘shirked responsibilities’
“So far the New Zealand government has shirked its responsibilities, set unambitious and irrational targets, and justified it all by saying we’re too small to make a difference,” Sarah Thomson told Asia Pacific Report.

“I’m young and I’m terrified of a time when I might have to look my kids in the eye and explain to them how we let this happen.”

Currently, the Emissions Trading Scheme is New Zealand’s main policy for making the much-needed transition to a low carbon-economy.

However, with no restrictions on the number of carbon units New Zealand purchases from other countries, New Zealand’s emissions can appear more rosy than they actually are.

13 years shy of reaching its Paris target, the “clean energy revolution” taking place across the globe does not appear to have reached New Zealand’s shores yet, but it could.

A 2013 report by Greenpeace New Zealand ‘The future is here: New jobs, new prosperity and a new clean economy’ reveals New Zealand could have an economy based entirely on renewables by 2050.

New Zealand is already a world leader in geothermal energy, but if the country invested more in smart electricity and smart transport over 25,000 jobs would be created while New Zealand’s carbon footprint would reduce to 1.8 million tonnes.

Clean, green reputation
Currently, 50 per cent of the country’s jobs rely on New Zealand’s “clean, green reputation” while 70 per cent of its exports rely on that same reputation.

If New Zealand makes the switch and invests more in renewable sources, those percentages are sure to climb.

Already, 70 per cent of New Zealand’s electricity needs are met by renewable sources.

“Only a small proportion of New Zealand’s electricity is generated by burning coal and gas,” Dr Wright acknowledges.

Along with the Asian Development Bank, she has recognised the opportunities for more renewable energy in the region.

“New Zealand is rich in geothermal energy, and with the best wind in the world, we have a great opportunity for decarbonising transport.”

In a July 2017 report, the Asian Development Bank note: “The rapidly decreasing costs of wind and solar power generated clearly indicates that consumption and production of the future could be driven by renewable energy sources.”

Lack of policy
It is, however, difficult to pin down the “when and where” of this transition, they note.

This may be the case for New Zealand due to a lack of government policy, says Amanda Larsson, an energy campaigner with Greenpeace New Zealand.

“We in New Zealand are falling behind due to a lack of government leadership. Not only is our government doing next to nothing to incentivise clean energy, they have sat on their hands while energy companies have extended the life of coal-fired power at Huntly.

“They have stood by while lines companies have introduced unfair charges on solar customers that discourage the uptake of clean solar power. And they continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars inviting the oil industry to look for more oil that we cannot afford to burn.”

If New Zealand continues down its current “business as usual” path, the outlook for the country and its neighbours in the Pacific is bleak.

“The scientific understanding, and our daily experience, is that climate change is happening at a faster rate than was appreciated at the time of the Paris Agreement,” the 13 nations of the Pacific Small Island Development States (PSIDS) said in a joint July statement.

Sea levels around the world are expected to rise between 75cm and 1.5 metres by the end of the century and none are more at risk than the low-lying coral atolls and islands of the Pacific.

Sea swallowing land
Already, the people of Kiribati are expected to relocate 200km away to Fiji by 2020 as stories across the Pacific region have emerged of the sea swallowing land.

In Palau, at its peak, high tide is 30cm higher than when the President of Palau, Tommy Remengesau, built his house in 1989.

In the Torres Strait, the cemetery on Boigu Island faces inundation while roads are being washed into the sea because the seawall is “already failing”.

For the people of Masig Island, there are fears they may have to abandon their ancestral home.

In Vanuatu, the islands of Nguna, Espiritu Santo and Tanna are facing water scarcity, food shortages, and an increase in natural disasters.

As Vilimaina Naqelevuki of the village of Narikoso on Ono Island in the Kadavu Group told the Bearing Witness project: “We’re going to lose our land, we’re going to lose our culture, our identity, if we don’t do anything about climate change at all.”

‘Survival of our people’
There are also concerns that even under the Paris Agreement, in which global warming is limited to 1.5 to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the Pacific will not survive.

“For Pacific Island countries, because of our vulnerable ecosystems, we can manage up to 1.5°C, but beyond that we’re going to start losing our ecosystems and livelihood, our resources, and then the survival of our people,” Dr Morgan Wairiu, an expert in food security and climate change with the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), told Asia Pacific Report.

Many feel New Zealand’s lack of political leadership on climate change is a “real betrayal” of the Pacific.

“Our Government knows that fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal drive climate change. They know that climate change is threatening to put whole nations underwater.

“Our Pacific neighbours are in the middle of a climate emergency and there is no excuse for pursuing an energy policy that prioritises oil, coal and gas at the expense of clean renewables,” Larsson says.

However, it is important to remember Pacific Island countries are fighting.

As PSIDS themselves note: “Our solemn obligation and responsibility is to ensure that the international community takes immediate and decisive action to address the underlying causes of global climate change.”

Pacific’s ‘solemn obligation’
Perhaps the greatest evidence of this “solemn obligation” is Fiji’s presidency of COP23 in Bonn, Germany, in November this year.

But the importance of clean energy in New Zealand cannot be more clear, both for the country and the Pacific region.

As Dr Wright asks: “What will our responsibility be towards our neighbours who live on low-lying coral atolls?”

Current national contributions by countries to the Paris Agreement on climate change are not enough to save the Pacific, says Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

“We have to try to persuade the rest of the world to embrace even more ambitious action in the years to come, because we all know that even the current national contributions to the Paris Agreement are not enough to save us,” he said, addressing Pacific leaders as the UN Oceans Conference came to a close in New York last week.

As the incoming president of COP23, Bainimarama called on the Pacific and its leaders to stand by him and demand decisive action, as climate change was an issue of critical importance to the region’s collective future.

“I want your input. I need your input. And I want every Pacific leader beside me as we demand decisive action to protect the security of our people and those in other vulnerable parts of the world.”

Bainimarama also outlined his worry that America’s decision to abandon the Paris Agreement may also encourage other nations to either back away from the commitments they have made or not implement them with the same resolve.

“We are all, quite naturally, bitterly disappointed by the decision of the Trump Administration to abandon the Paris Agreement,” he said.

“Not only because of the loss of American leadership on this issue of critical importance to the whole world, but because it may also encourage other nations to either back away from the commitments they have made or not implement them with the same resolve.

“But something wonderful is also happening. The American decision is galvanising opinion around the world in support of decisive climate action.

‘Widespread rebellion’
“Other nations and blocs like China, the European Union and India are stepping forward to assume the leadership that Donald Trump has abandoned. And within America itself, there is a widespread rebellion against the decision the President has taken.”

Bainimarama said dozens of American state governors and city mayors were banding together with leaders of the private sector, civil society and ordinary citizens to redouble their efforts to meet this challenge.

“So while the Trump Administration may have abandoned its leadership on climate change, the American people haven’t.

“Next week, I will go to California to meet the Democrat Governor Jerry Brown and sign up to the climate action initiative that he is spearheading. I am also in contact with his Republican predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who shares Governor Brown’s commitment.

“The point is that on both sides of American politics, we have friends who are standing with us in this struggle. And I am inviting both Governor Brown and the famous ‘Terminator’ to come to our pre-COP gathering in Fiji in October, where we hope they will join us in a gesture of solidarity with the vulnerable just before COP23 itself in Bonn the following month.”

The Paris Agreement, which Fiji has ratified, sets out a global action plan to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

Nasik Swami is a reporter with The Fiji Times

• Pacific leaders drive call for healthier oceans at UN conference

Pacific Media Centre News Desk

The Pacific Islands Forum remains committed to the Paris Agreement on climate change and has commended all countries reaffirming their support.

The Forum announced this in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s notice of withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

“Being some of the most vulnerable states globally and at the forefront of the adverse impacts of climate change, island countries are now more determined and committed to taking serious action to address climate change and remain steadfast on our obligations under the Paris Agreement,” says Forum Chair Peter Christian, who is also President of the Federated States of Micronesia.

Pacific Islands countries collectively contribute a mere 0.003 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions although the region is at the frontline of a deteriorating environment and the “devastating manifestations” of climate change over the past three years, a Forum statement said.

President Christian reaffirmed that the Paris Agreement offered the best global platform of unity among nations to address the causes of climate change and the way forward.

“The US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement is not surprising as President Trump had made known his intentions to jettison United States’ environment for the sake of his economy,” President Christian said.

“We who are most vulnerable must become more committed to the principal that the Paris Agreement is still our best avenue to finding solutions to slow down and eventually stop the damage to climate and environment.

“Global leadership on climate change is at a critical juncture.

“The Pacific Islands Forum will continue to support Forum Member Fiji’s COP 23 Presidency and will continue working with others who are committed to the Paris Agreement to address the greatest emergency for our planet to date.”

• Trump’s pullout from Paris climate pact ‘threatens lives’ of Pacific people

Report by Kendall Hutt and video by Julie Cleaver in Suva

The commitment of more than 190 nations to reducing global emissions will continue to be addressed following a special climate change report which seeks to advise how countries can further cut emissions.

Dr Morgan Wairiu, an expert in food security and climate change with the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), says the report will enable countries to further their efforts in keeping the global average temperature below 1.5°C.

“This is an assessment report, looking at all the work that has been done, research into the global average temperature 1.5°C, and see whether this is feasible, whether we can achieve that as agreed under the Paris Agreement.”

Dr Wairiu, a Solomon Islander who is one of only two Pacific Islanders working on the report, said that if current aggregate emissions reductions by countries under their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) would see the global average temperature on track for 2.7°C, which would have real-world effects on Pacific Island countries that were on the frontline of climate change.

“For Pacific Island countries, because of our vulnerable ecosystems, we can manage up to 1.5°C, but beyond that we’re going to start losing our ecosystems and livelihood, our resources, and then the survival of our people.”

Commissioned by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) following the Paris Agreement in late December 2015, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 1.5°C report seeks to avoid such negative outcomes.

Dr Wairiu said this was because data collected by the 86 authors of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C would allow countries to “take stock” of their current emissions targets.

When this report is released in 2018, it will help countries decide on how to cut back emissions.

Reduction pledges
By 2025, the US has pledged to reduce emissions from 26 percent to 28 percent relative to 2005 levels.

China, on the other hand, says it will lower its emissions by 60 to 65 percent, but only after reaching maximum carbon emissions by 2030.

The European Union, meanwhile, aims to cut back emissions by at least 40 percent relative to 1990 levels.

The issue noted by many observers is that these intended targets put forward by nations prior to the Paris Agreement are up to each individual country to implement and force.

If these are not honoured or increased, scientists have warned the world will surpass the threshold in which global warming is reversible. The results of which will be catastrophic, observers believe.

Heat waves are predicted to last a third longer, rain storms would be about a third more intense, sea level will continue to rise, and tropical reefs would continue to degrade, a study by the European Geosciences Union revealed in 2016.

Loss of more atolls
The implications for human life of a warmer planet mean already vulnerable communities who live close to sources of water will face more flooding and drought.

For the Pacific, this means the loss of more atolls to sea level rise, salt water intrusion to fresh water supplies and staple crops, and the forced migration of Pacific Islanders.

“Some countries will disappear from the face of the world,” Dr Wairiu said.

He said a 1.5°C global average temperature was the threshold in which Pacific Islands would be able to survive, therefore. Beyond that, the future was relatively unknown.

The report is important for the Pacific, Dr Wairiu acknowledges.

“It’s very important because this is a call from Pacific Island countries. You know, they formed this coalition around the legal setting of 1.5°C during the Paris COP meeting, which is part of the Paris Agreement.

“This particular report will inform Pacific Island countries whether achieving 1.5°C is feasible or not. We’ll still be making very important decisions based on this report.”

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.

• UNFCCC climate newsroom

Getting climate change under control is a formidable, multifaceted challenge. Analysis by my colleagues and me suggests that staying within safe warming levels now requires removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The technology to do this is in its infancy and will take years, even decades, to develop, but our analysis suggests that this must be a priority. If pushed, operational large-scale systems should be available by 2050.

We created a simple climate model and looked at the implications of different levels of carbon in the ocean and the atmosphere. This lets us make projections about greenhouse warming, and see what we need to do to limit global warming to within 1.5℃ of pre-industrial temperatures – one of the ambitions of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

To put the problem in perspective, here are some of the key numbers.

Humans have emitted 1,540 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide gas since the industrial revolution. To put it another way, that’s equivalent to burning enough coal to form a square tower 22 metres wide that reaches from Earth to the Moon.

Half of these emissions have remained in the atmosphere, causing a rise of CO₂ levels that is at least 10 times faster than any known natural increase during Earth’s long history. Most of the other half has dissolved into the ocean, causing acidification with its own detrimental impacts.

Although nature does remove CO₂, for example through growth and burial of plants and algae, we emit it at least 100 times faster than it’s eliminated. We can’t rely on natural mechanisms to handle this problem: people will need to help as well.

What’s the goal?
The Paris climate agreement aims to limit global warming to well below 2℃, and ideally no higher than 1.5℃. (Others say that 1℃ is what we should be really aiming for, although the world is already reaching and breaching this milestone.)

In our research, we considered 1℃ a better safe warming limit because any more would take us into the territory of the Eemian period, 125,000 years ago. For natural reasons, during this era the Earth warmed by a little more than 1℃.

Looking back, we can see the catastrophic consequences of global temperatures staying this high over an extended period.

Sea levels during the Eemian period were up to 10m higher than present levels. Today, the zone within 10m of sea level is home to 10 percent of the world’s population, and even a 2m sea-level rise today would displace almost 200 million people.

Clearly, pushing towards an Eemian-like climate is not safe. In fact, with 2016 having been 1.2℃ warmer than the pre-industrial average, and extra warming locked in thanks to heat storage in the oceans, we may already have crossed the 1℃ average threshold.

To keep warming below the 1.5℃ goal of the Paris agreement, it’s vital that we remove CO₂ from the atmosphere as well as limiting the amount we put in.

So how much CO₂ do we need to remove to prevent global disaster?
Are you a pessimist or an optimist?

Two rough scenarios
Currently, humanity’s net emissions amount to roughly 37 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year, which represents 10 gigatonnes of carbon burned (a gigatonne is a billion tonnes). We need to reduce this drastically. But even with strong emissions reductions, enough carbon will remain in the atmosphere to cause unsafe warming.

Using these facts, we identified two rough scenarios for the future.

The first scenario is pessimistic. It has CO₂ emissions remaining stable after 2020. To keep warming within safe limits, we then need to remove almost 700 gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere and ocean, which freely exchange CO₂. To start, reforestation and improved land use can lock up to 100 gigatonnes away into trees and soils. This leaves a further 600 gigatonnes to be extracted via technological means by 2100.

Technological extraction currently costs at least US$150 per tonne. At this price, over the rest of the century, the cost would add up to US$90 trillion. This is similar in scale to current global military spending, which – if it holds steady at around US$1.6 trillion a year – will add up to roughly US$132 trillion over the same period.

The second scenario is optimistic. It assumes that we reduce emissions by 6 percent each year starting in 2020. We then still need to remove about 150 gigatonnes of carbon.

As before, reforestation and improved land use can account for 100 gigatonnes, leaving 50 gigatonnes to be technologically extracted by 2100. The cost for that would be US$7.5 trillion by 2100 – only 6 percent of the global military spend.

Of course, these numbers are a rough guide. But they do illustrate the crossroads at which we find ourselves.

The job to be done
Right now is the time to choose: without action, we’ll be locked into the pessimistic scenario within a decade. Nothing can justify burdening future generations with this enormous cost.

For success in either scenario, we need to do more than develop new technology. We also need new international legal, policy, and ethical frameworks to deal with its widespread use, including the inevitable environmental impacts.

Releasing large amounts of iron or mineral dust into the oceans could remove CO₂ by changing environmental chemistry and ecology. But doing so requires revision of international legal structures that currently forbid such activities.

Similarly, certain minerals can help remove CO₂ by increasing the weathering of rocks and enriching soils. But large-scale mining for such minerals will impact on landscapes and communities, which also requires legal and regulatory revisions.

And finally, direct CO₂ capture from the air relies on industrial-scale installations, with their own environmental and social repercussions.

Without new legal, policy, and ethical frameworks, no significant advances will be possible, no matter how great the technological developments. Progressive nations may forge ahead toward delivering the combined package.

The costs of this are high. But countries that take the lead stand to gain technology, jobs, energy independence, better health, and international gravitas.

Dr Eelco Rohling is Professor of Ocean and Climate Change at the Australian National University. Disclosure statement: He receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the UK Natural Environment Research Council. He is also affiliated with the University of Southampton, UK. This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished by Asia Pacific Report under a Creative Commons licence.

Donald Trump is so spectacularly horrible that it’s hard to look away – especially now that he’s discovered bombs. But precisely because everyone’s staring gape-mouthed in his direction, other world leaders are able to get away with almost anything.

Don’t believe me? Look one country north, at Justin Trudeau.

Look all you want, in fact – he sure is cute, the planet’s only sovereign leader who appears to have recently quit a boy band. And he’s mastered so beautifully the politics of inclusion: compassionate to immigrants, insistent on including women at every level of government. Give him great credit where it’s deserved: in lots of ways he’s the anti-Trump, and it’s no wonder Canadians swooned when he took over.

But when it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, he’s a brother to the old orange guy in Washington.

Not rhetorically: Trudeau says all the right things, over and over. He’s got no Scott Pruitts in his cabinet: everyone who works for him says the right things. Indeed, they specialise in getting others to say them too – it was Canadian diplomats, and the country’s environment minister, Catherine McKenna, who pushed at the Paris climate talks for a tougher-than-expected goal: holding the planet’s rise in temperature to 1.5C (2.7F).

But those words are meaningless if you keep digging up more carbon and selling it to people to burn, and that’s exactly what Trudeau is doing. He’s hard at work pushing for new pipelines through Canada and the US to carry yet more oil out of Alberta’s tar sands, which is one of the greatest climate disasters on the planet.

Last month, speaking at a Houston petroleum industry gathering, he got a standing ovation from the oilmen for saying: “No country would find 173bn barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.”

Recoverable oil estimate
Yes, 173bn barrels is indeed the estimate for recoverable oil in the tar sands. So let’s do some math. If Canada digs up that oil and sells it to people to burn, it will produce, according to the math whizzes at Oil Change International, 30 percent of the carbon necessary to take us past the 1.5C target that Canada helped set in Paris.

That is to say, Canada, which represents one half of 1 percent of the planet’s population, is claiming the right to sell the oil that will use up a third of the earth’s remaining carbon budget. Trump is a creep and a danger and unpleasant to look at, but at least he’s not a stunning hypocrite.

This having-your-cake-and-burning-it-too is central to Canada’s self-image/energy policy. McKenna, confronted by Canada’s veteran environmentalist David Suzuki, said tartly: “We have an incredible climate change plan that includes putting a price on carbon pollution, also investing in clean innovation.

“But we also know we need to get our natural resources to market and we’re doing both.” Right.

But doing the second negates the first – in fact, it completely overwhelms it. If Canada is busy shipping carbon all over the world, it wouldn’t matter all that much if every Tim Horton’s stopped selling doughnuts and started peddling solar panels instead.

Canada’s got company in this scam. Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull is supposed to be more sensitive than his predecessor, a Trump-like blowhard.

When he signed on his nation to the Paris climate accords, he said: “It is clear the agreement was a watershed, a turning point and the adoption of a comprehensive strategy has galvanised the international community and spurred on global action.”

Which is a fine thing to say – or would be, if your government wasn’t backing plans for the largest coal mine on Earth.

Mathematically and morally absurd
That single mine, in a country of 24 million people, will produce 362 percent of the annual carbon emissions that everyone in the Philippines produces in the course of a year.

It is obviously, mathematically and morally absurd.

Trump, of course, is working just as eagerly to please the fossil fuel industry – he’s instructed the Bureau of Land Management to make permitting even easier for new oil and gas projects, for instance. And frackers won’t even have to keep track of how much methane they’re spewing under his new guidelines.

And why should they? If you believe, as Trump apparently does, that global warming is a delusion, a hoax, a mirage, you might as well get out of the way.

Trump’s insulting the planet, in other words. But at least he’s not pretending otherwise.

By Pasifik/Pacnews

Fijian Prime Minister and incoming COP23 president Voreqe Bainimarama says he intends to use his position to reach out to US President Donald Trump to find common ground and move the global agenda forward on Climate Change.

“It is no secret that the United States federal administration under President Trump appears to be less enthusiastic about the Paris Agreement,” Bainimarama told the Fiji Parliament this week.

He said during their meeting with United Nations top climate change administrator Patricia Espinosa last week in Suva, both agreed that the world cannot afford to drop the ball at this critical stage.

“More than 120 countries have so far ratified the Paris Agreement, pledging their commitment to address the issues of climate change and to also reduce their carbon emissions so that we can keep the global temperature as close as possible to one-point-five degrees above that of the pre-industrial age,” Bainimarama said.

“But as you all know, there are worrying signs that the momentum for decisive action may be slowing.”

“As incoming COP president, I also intend to work closely with some of the big players such as China, India, the European Union, Japan, Canada, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Australia, New Zealand and others to keep the momentum rolling.

“And, of course, to work closely with our Pacific Island neighbours, international NGOs, civil society and the private sector.

‘Representing the world’
“My brief as incoming COP president is to represent the interests of the entire world. To be impartial and achieve consensus between all parties on the best way forward.

“But it is only natural that as Fijians we have a special interest in the needs of Small Island Developing States in our own region and beyond.”

Bainimarama said in the lead-up to the main COP gathering in Bonn in November, Fiji intends to hold a “Climate Champions” meeting in Suva.

“And bring Pacific leaders, NGOs, civil societies and representatives of the private sector together to discuss a common agenda for COP.

“And then in October, a month before Bonn, we will host a pre-COP gathering in Denarau of many of the major players to hone our approach to the main event itself.

“As the year progresses, we will be making a special effort to engage the Fijian people – and especially our young people and our artists – in the COP process. And that engagement has already begun, with the advertisement on Saturday calling for ideas for the COP logo.

“We are putting together a dedicated Fiji Secretariat to make preparations here in Fiji and to liaise with the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn.

Team effort
“Our UN friends have stressed that this is a team effort in which Fiji will work closely with them and the German Government to make COP 23 an unqualified success. And we have hired the same expert team of consultants that assisted Morocco with its successful hosting of COP22.

“As to meeting the cost of our commitment, we have already begun the task of raising the necessary funds in the form of donations from an array of nations and foundations.

“These funds will be deposited into a trust fund here in Fiji that we are establishing with an Act of Parliament. The Bill setting up the fund will be tabled this week,” Bainimarama told Parliament.

• COP23 climate action