Crunch Time in Paris for Pacific Island Nations

World leaders and their climate negotiators are this week gathering in Paris in the wake of that city’s devastating terrorist attacks for the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, also known as COP21. The talks will run from November 30 to December 11, and will aspire to produce a legally binding agreement that encompasses all nations, in a bid to limit the rise in average global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius, beyond which, say scientists, climate change will be catastrophic and irreversible.

Few in Paris will have a better understanding of just what is at stake than those representing the Pacific Island Nations, a collection of tiny, mostly poor countries in the South Pacific, which together make up the region on earth most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

A number of Pacific Island Nations are already experiencing some of these effects, in the form of severe weather events, food crises, and even the threat of disappearing altogether under rising sea levels.

The Diplomat last year reported on a growing food security issue in the Solomon Islands, where warmer temperatures have brought pests and disease, which are ravaging vital crops. In another piece, we looked at the dire situation in states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands, which are experiencing short-term problems from more intense weather events, but in the long term face the loss of their homeland entirely. Kiribati President Anote Tong described his country’s fate to Bloomberg Businessweek, predicting that his country had  fewer than 20 years to live. “If nothing is done, Kiribati will go down into the ocean. By about 2030 we start disappearing. Our existence will come to an end in stages. First, the freshwater lens will be destroyed. The breadfruit trees, the taro, the saltwater is going to kill them.”

The region has even produced the first “climate refugee,” when a Kiribati man applied for asylum in New Zealand on the grounds that climate change was threatening his home. His claim was rejected, but clearly New Zealand and Australia will be dealing with this problem again.

Perhaps more than any other aspect, the fate of the Pacific Island Nations throws the moral dimension of climate change into sharp relief. These countries have produced a tiny fraction of global emissions, yet they are the ones that look likely to suffer most.

Anger

Not surprisingly, Pacific Island leaders are angry. Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama was blunt in October: “We in the Pacific are innocent bystanders in the greatest act of folly of any age. Unless the world acts decisively in the coming weeks to begin addressing the greatest challenge of our age, then the Pacific, as we know it, is doomed.” Meanwhile, Tong recently called Australia “selfish” for protecting its coal industry, a major source of export revenue.

Indeed, Australia – which has the highest per capita emissions of any industrialized country – has been singled out by Pacific leaders for its position on climate change. Under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Australia was noticeably out of step with much of the rest of the international community on climate change. Abbott’s successor, Malcolm Turnbull is known to favor much tougher action, but is still constrained by the recalcitrant right wing of his Liberal Party. One of the most interesting developments to watch in Paris will be how far Turnbull is prepared to move from his predecessor’s position.

Meanwhile, Pacific Island leaders have been building a regional consensus ahead of the Paris talks. Last week, they met with French President Francois Hollande, who pledged that their concerns would be taken into account.

Certainly there is unprecedented international momentum for a new deal, and there is optimism that Paris will produce one – with developing nations for the first time obliged to join the industrialized world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps most significantly, following an agreement last year between China and the U.S., there is a strong sense that the world’s two largest emitters are on the same page.

Still, experts acknowledge that the emissions cuts pledged would only limit the increase in global temperatures to 2.7 degrees Celsius, which is why they insist that any deal be subject to ongoing reviews, with the aim of achieving further reductions in the years to come. And for a number of Pacific Islands Nations, even an increase of 2 degrees Celsius could well prove catastrophic.

Paris may well turn out to be a welcome step forward on international action on climate change. But the increasing urgency of the situation in the South Pacific should make clear that any breakthrough comes not a moment too soon.