By Dr Satyendra Prasad
Pacific’s leaders and civil society have been actively preparing for the United Nations Climate Conference in Brazil (COP30) for months now.
Its leaders were clear at the recently concluded Pacific Islands Forum Meeting in Honiara. They want to focus their attention on speeding up implementation of programmes. Finance and knowhow are the missing ingredients for that. They were unambiguous – the World is failing the Pacific.
The Chair of PIF – Prime Minister of Solomon Islands and the Prime Ministers of Fiji and Tonga were especially forceful at forums across the UN General Assembly following the PIF meeting. They said that speeding up responses to climate change is the regions greatest priority.
A $1 Billion Plus Infrastructure Deficit
Pacific’s leaders spoke about the infrastructure deficit arising from climate change. The region today needs well in excess of US$500 million annually to maintain its human and physical infrastructure in the face of rising seas and fiercer storms.
These are over 1000 plus primary and secondary schools, dozens of health centres across coastal areas in Solomon Islands, PNG, Vanuatu and Fiji that need to be repaired rehabilitated or relocated.
The region needs anything between US$300-US$500 million annually for a decade to climate proof critical infrastructure – i.e, airstrips, jetties, water and electricity and telecommunications.
The Blue Pacific’s infrastructure distress is a cocktail that is persistent in poisoning our human development progress. This has lethal consequences for our elderly, for children and the most vulnerable.
As a region, we often fail to tell the World with sufficient clarity that our region’s infrastructure distress is fundamentally and quintessentially a climate distress. This must change.
The constant cycle of catastrophe, recovery and debt are on autoplay repeat. The heart-braking images coming out of Jamaica and the Caribbean in the wake of Hurricane Mellissa makes this same point.
It does make our blood boil that the Pacific as a region attracts a woefully insufficient share of existing climate finance. Less than 1.5 percent of the total climate finances reach the World’s most climate vulnerable region today. This must change.
Gratitude to Vanuatu and Pacific’s Students
COP30 in Brazil will be the first COP after the International Court of Justice issued its advisory opinion on legal obligations of states in the face of climate change.
This opinion gives much needed energy to the Blue Pacific’s leaders and negotiators. All of the Blue Pacific owes its deepest gratitude to Pacific’s students for their courage and to Vanuatu for its leadership.
Is Our Planet Headed for a 3.0 Celsius World?
At COP30, the World will see what the new climate commitments add up to. Our best estimates today suggest that the planet is headed for a 3.0 Celsius plus temperature rise. This will be catastrophic for the Blue Pacific.
Life across our coral reef systems will simply roast at those temperatures. The regions economic lifeline and its food security will be harmed irreparably.
There will be massive consequences for tourism dependent economies. Bleached reefs bleach tourism incomes.
The health consequences arising from climate change are set to worsen rapidly. As will the toll on children who will fall further behind in their learning as schools remain inaccessible for longer periods; or who spend long hours in hotter classrooms.
For Pacific’s women, the toll of runaway temperature increase will be heavy – on their health, on their livelihoods and on their security. It will be too heavy.
A Deal for the Pacific at COP30
The World of climate change is becoming too transactional. Short termism and deal making have become its norm.
As Pacific Leaders, its civil society, its science community and its young engage at COP30 in Brazil, they are reminded that the Blue Pacific needs a settled outlook climate finance that will be available to the region. Finance must be foremostly predictable.
The region should not feel like it is playing a lottery – as is the case today. Tonga must know broadly how much climate finance will be available to it over the next 5 years, so must Palau and so must PNG.
At Bele’m, the World will need to agree to a road map for how the climate financing short fall will be met. This is a must to restore trust and faith in the global process.
Tonga’s PM Aisake Eke, PNG’s Prime Minister Marape, the Chair of PIF and Solomon Islands PM Manele have been firm in their recent messages. The developed World owes the Blue Pacific its just share of climate finance – not a tala more not a kina less.
The weight on hosts Brazil is extraordinarily heavy. Brazil is the home of the famous Rio Conference in 1992 where the small island states first succeeded in placing climate change, biodiversity loss on the global agenda.
The Small Islands States grouping today is chaired by Palau. President Whipps Jnr will lead the islands to Brazil. He will no doubt remind the host that the World has failed the small states persistently since that moment of great hope at the Rio Conference in 1992.
Quality and Pace of Climate Finance
There are three principal reasons why climate finance must flow to the Pacific on scale and speed. First is that most countries in our region have less than a decade to adapt. Farms and family gardens, small businesses, tourist resorts, villages and livelihoods need to adapt now to meet a climate changed world.
Secondly, if adaption is pushed into the future because of woefully insufficient finances – the window to adapt will be lost.
As more sectors of our economy fall beyond rehabilitation, the costs of loss and damage will rise. Time is of the essence. Loss and Damage remains poorly funded.
Everything for the BluePacific rests on a decent outcome on financing. The Pacific is well advised to seek to lock in both a quantum and a percentage.
Equally, it needs to make its clearest argument that its share of climate finance must be ring-fenced. That is a share of climate finance that remains available to the region even if demand is slow to take shape.
The Pacific’s rightful share of climate finance over the next decade is between 3-5 percent of the total across all financing windows. This is fundamentally because based the adaptation window is so short in such a uniquely specific way.
This should mean having access to a floor of $1.5 billion (USD) annually through to 2035.
Beyond Bele’m
The Belem Climate COP is an opportunity for the Pacific to begin to frame a larger consensus – well in time for COP31. It is my hope that Australia and Pacific’s leaders have done enough to secure the hosting rights for COP31.
A “Circuit-Breaker” COP31
COP31 must “a circuit breaker moment” for the Blue Pacific. The reversals in our development story arising from the climate chaos are just too burdensome. Repeated recoveries means that every next recovery becomes that much harder than the one preceding it.
Ask anyone in Jamaica and Caribbean today and you will hear this same message. Their finance ministers know too well that in no time they will be back at the mercy of international financial institutions to rebuild roads and bridges that have been washed away, water systems that have been destroyed and all other critical infrastructure.
Climate finance by its very nature therefore must involve deep changes to the architecture of international development and finance. The rich world is not yet ready to let go of privilege and power that it wields through an archaic financial international system.
But fundamental reform is a must and a necessary part of the overall effort by small states to reclaim agency and begin to shape their own destinies.
Future proofing
Climate change erodes memories. It disrupts spiritual connections to land and oceans. It hurts our past. Equally, it threatens our future as geographically bounded communities, as viable states and as viable communities.
The risks arising from climate change are so multi-faceted that economic and political stability cannot no longer be taken for granted in this region.
Conflicts over land lost to rising seas, the strain on education, health and water infrastructure, deepening debt stress take their toll on institutions through which stability is maintained.
The Blue Pacific needs to work with this heightened risk of fragility and state failure. This reality must shape the Blue Pacific expectations from a Pacific COP.
Building on the excellent work underway in climate ministries in Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, PNG and across the region through the SPC, SPREP, OPOC, I have outlined what the Pacific’s expectations could be from a Pacific COP31.
That COP must be about transformation and impact. Broadly, the Blue Pacific’s leaders may seek a consensus between the rich industrial World and large developing countries such as China and India in support of a Pacific Package.
A Pacific COP 31 Package
The core elements of a Pacific package at COP31 may be
(i) A Loss and Damage Fund that has become fully operational with a pipeline of investment ready projects from across the Blue Pacific.
(ii) Securing the Pacific Regional Infrastructure Facility (PRIF) as a viable and disbursement ready financing facility.
(iii) Securing defined and ring-fenced climate finance allocations for the Blue Pacific at the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and across international financial institutions.
(iv) Securing support for large “lighthouse” multi-country (or region wide) transformative programs to advance marine protection, protect biodiversity and promote sustainability across the Blue Pacific Ocean.
(v) A COP decision that is unambiguous on quality and speed of climate and ocean finance that will be available to small states for the remainder of the decade.
(vi) Securing sufficient resources that can flow directly to communities and families to rapidly rebuild their resilience following disasters and catastrophes including through insurance and social protection vehicles.
(vii) Ensuring that knowhow, resources and mechanisms for disaster risk reduction are in place, are fully operational and are sustainable.
An Ocean of Peace for a Climate Changed World
Fiji’s Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka has introduced to the PIF the concept of the Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace. This has far reaching consequences for regions climate diplomacy.
The Pacific’s leaders accept that the Ocean of Peace anchors its stewardship of our marine environment to the highest principles of protection and conservation. An Ocean of Peace super-charges the Pacific’s commitments to take forward transboundary marine research and conservation, end plastic and harmful waste disposal, end harmful fisheries subsidies and decarbonise shipping.
It boosts the Pacific’s call to main-frame the ocean-climate nexus into the international climate change frameworks at COP30.
A Window of Hope
Between COP30 and COP31 lies is a rare and a unique window of hope. The Blue Pacific can leverage this well and finally begin to win.
Both a Brazilian and an Australian Presidency provide supportive back-to-back spaces to take forward the regions desire to build and project a solid foundation of programmes and policies that are necessary to secure its future.
The stakes are so high. I join Pacific Islanders in wishing the Pacific’s leaders and policy makers great success.
(Dr Satyendra Prasad is Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Fiji’s Former Ambassador to the UN. He is also the Climate Lead for Abt Global)
