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Tonga, the world’s sixth most climate-vulnerable country, will host Pacific leaders this week. Tonga last attracted international attention in 2021 when the Hunga Tonga-Hungaha’apai volcano tragically erupted. The level of death, injuries and damage to infrastructure shocked the world.
Tonga has since been hit by several cyclones. Its public debt has grown to more than 40% of GDP. Fiscal pressures constrain its ability to make greater progress on the Global Development Goals (SDGs). Fiscal pressures severely constrain its ability to respond to future climate disasters. Tonga, like the rest of the Pacific, needs better strategies to meet the challenges of global warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius.
This week, Tonga’s Prime Minister, Huakawemeliku Shosi Sovalenei, will host the 53rd Blue Pacific Leaders’ Meeting, where he will set the Pacific’s priorities for the year. He will do so wisely, thoughtfully, and in a way that is inclusive of the different perspectives of other leaders.
The Kingdom has set out a vision for a transformative, resilient Pacific. To achieve this, the region needs to start building better now.
Building better resilience in the Blue Pacific starts with strong leadership at the regional level. But equally, it is a question of the depth of regional partnerships and the scale of resources available to our region. Tonga rightly points out that the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions need to build resilience now – within this decade. Urgency is the key to survival.
Pacific leaders have a full agenda. They will consider making Guam and American Samoa associate members of the Forum family. This will more firmly integrate the United States into the Pacific family. It took the United States a long time to realize that it is a Pacific power. Even if it is decades late, this should be widely welcomed.
Pathway and timeline for decolonization of New Caledonia
Pacific Island leaders will be agonizing over how best to formulate their approach to completing the steps now required for the decolonization of New Caledonia. Many will argue that the time for slow, incremental development is over and that time-bound steps need to be agreed upon. Leaders of the MSG group will likely argue that the Pacific Islands Forum should play a greater role in ensuring that the decolonization of New Caledonia is completed without any further violence.
Pacific leaders will take further steps to operationalize the Pacific Resilience Fund. Leaders are likely to discuss transnational crime and its growing impact on domestic economies and societies, as well as a number of other standing items, including the implementation of our 2050 strategy – Southern Cross for a Blue Pacific.
Unforgiving geopolitical environment
Leaders in the Pacific region know they are meeting against a backdrop of a global climate more dire than in years, with raging conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine continuing to consume much of the international community’s oxygen.
The geopolitical contestation over the Blue Pacific (that portion of the vast Pacific Ocean that is the collective exclusive economic zone of island nations) has never been more intense in decades. This contestation takes place in all domains – the oceans, the seabed, space and, of course, on land, especially for resources.
The risk of miscalculation and conflict in the “Blue Pacific” due to misunderstandings between superpowers has never been higher. Leaders in the Pacific region know this all too well.
Leaders in the Pacific will also know that in the new international environment of high geopolitical tensions, the voices of small island states have become muted in the large forums where the big decisions of our time are made. The interests of superpowers and large developing countries tend to overwhelm discussions that small states are interested in. Small states feel claustrophobic in these global spaces.
In this context, Tonga, as Chair, has a responsibility to reboot and reinvigorate international diplomacy in the Pacific. Many of the policy revisions, big and small, that are needed will be made in boardrooms far from the shores of the blue Pacific.
First Pacific leaders’ meeting to be held after 1.5 degrees Celsius warming?
Last year, the world may have breached the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming target. This may be the first meeting of Pacific leaders in this context. It may take years for the world to get back on track to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This matters for the whole world. This is a matter of life and death for the Pacific.
The 1.5-degree Celsius target is a guardrail for the Pacific region against continued climate chaos. Every decimal point above 1.5 degrees Celsius increases, meaning it becomes harder for Pacific economies to adapt. Every decimal point increases the cost of adaptation by at least 15%.
If global temperatures rise above 2.0 degrees Celsius, much of the adaptation work in the Blue Pacific will become impossible. Warming above 2.0 degrees Celsius means that many infrastructure projects already underway will need to be restarted. It’s that simple. The region will need to consider building standards that can handle Category 6 and 7 hurricanes – hurricanes that don’t exist yet, but for which we should be preparing and building now.
Finance ministers across the region have been sounding the alarm, warning that they don’t have enough fiscal space to expand development without maintaining the ability to respond to the next crisis. The costs of repairing damage from more intense storms and faster deterioration of infrastructure are increasing. Dealing with these losses will eat into their efforts to expand health care and improve the quality of education. The trade-off is troubling. Against this backdrop, we offer some considerations to leaders across the Pacific.
PIF leaders are on combat mode
First, Pacific Islands Forum leaders should make clear that if the world fails to live up to its commitments under the Paris Treaty, it will be tantamount to declaring war on Pacific Island nations and their communities. Ending the war in Ukraine is essential to peace in Europe. Ending the climate war is essential to peace and security across the blue Pacific.
Small nations need deep and enduring partnerships, not partnerships for the better. The depth of partnership with the Pacific depends not on the number of zeros on the aid cheque book, but on the clarity of the commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (no more than one decimal point). I am sure the Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum will find an elegant way to express this. Elegance is the hallmark of Tongan diplomacy.
Second, Pacific leaders will take the first important steps to operationalize their own climate finance mechanism, the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF). This is a big deal. They will seek significant financial commitments to establish and operationalize the Pacific’s self-managed climate finance mechanism. They will welcome the support of UN Secretary-General António Guterres to help mobilize international financial commitments.
Local responses to climate change
The PRF is essential to accelerating the region’s response to the climate crisis. The Pacific wants to change the status quo. Rather than relying on charity and slow-moving international instruments like the GCF, they want to start shaping and driving their own responses to climate change. If the region gets this right, there’s no reason the PRF can’t one day evolve into the Pacific’s own development bank—a critical step in protecting the region’s sovereignty in the medium term. I hope some leaders start thinking about this future, too.
Third, Pacific leaders would do well to agree internationally on their climate needs in the clearest, simplest terms possible. They need ten times more climate finance than current levels. Estimates put the minimum at between $1.5 billion and $2 billion per year. Clarity on their collective climate finance needs should frame their international diplomacy – at the Climate COP in Azerbaijan and in regional meetings with development partners. As the world works to agree on setting and funding a new global climate finance target, the Pacific should seek a lasting solution to its growing needs. Tonga and the Pacific may have other time for other things – but not for the climate crisis.
The Pacific Island countries’ climate debt – the debt they incur to recover and rebuild after climate change – needs to be written off. Period. That will give them some of the fiscal space they need to finance their development. Their adaptation needs to accelerate dramatically. This is especially important for small Pacific Island countries, which have a short and narrowing window to adapt – often less than 10 years. Adaptation finance needs to be scaled up many times over.
Fourth, the Pacific region welcomes the departure of the Uto ni Yalo from Fiji, which I hope will draw more attention to the blue economy. The blue Pacific is one of the lungs of the world. Its marine resources belong to us. But this is controversial.
The Blue Pacific is the world’s first nuclear-free zone. Leaders in the Pacific region can declare the Blue Pacific a Sea of Peace. Through such a declaration, they can provide clearer guidance for expanding the protection and conservation of the region’s maritime space. They can initiate new mechanisms to mobilize blue investments and sustainably manage its precious marine resources.
Leaders could initiate efforts to develop regional instruments to address ocean-related challenges, such as the potential for future seabed mining. They could propose obligations for their partners and friends to share information about activities in the Blue Pacific, including those related to security. The region needs to work systematically to proactively eliminate potential flashpoints. If it fails to do so, its solidarity will be undermined.
Finally, in a few weeks, many Pacific leaders will gather again at the annual UN General Assembly in New York. Even in such a difficult global environment, the UN Secretary-General will attend the Tonga meeting for the first time to convene a future summit. Pacific leaders would do well to adopt a unified view before the summit.
They may use future summits to call for major changes in the international financial architecture so that they finally stop working against small island states and start working for them. They may want to signal that they see our region as an equal, rather than excluded, part of a digitally connected world. They may seek assurances from the international system that the rules and procedures of international governance that oppress and marginalize small states will be fixed so that small states have a voice and influence in the global system.
This is a very meaningful meeting for Pacific Islanders. I join Pacific Islanders in wishing the Chair and our leaders well in their deliberations. This means a lot to Pacific Islanders.
Dr. Satyendra Prasad is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, climate lead at Abt Global, and former Fiji ambassador to the United Nations. The opinions expressed here are his own.
Source: PACNEWS
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