Sea level rise and Caledonian crisis top topics at Pacific summit

FIP brings together 18 countries and territories, including New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Today, many of its members are threatened with total destruction as sea levels rise due to global warming. Countries like Tuvalu (highest point: 4.6 meters) could disappear beneath the waves within thirty years.

Summit guest UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will back Pacific leaders’ calls for help.

“Climate change remains as high a priority for FIP leaders as ever,” said Mihai Sora, director of Pacific studies at Australia’s Lowy Institute. “The UN secretary-general’s presence is there to draw the attention of the international community and to increase pressure.”

Australia, both a member of FIP and a major mining power belatedly trying to rehabilitate its environmental image, will find itself in a delicate position vis-à-vis its partners.

China aims to host the COP31 climate conference in 2026 with the support of its Pacific neighbours. But first it must convince them of its genuine desire to reduce emissions.

– US-China competition –

The summit will be the first for the new FIP secretary-general, Nauran Baron Waqa, who is a terminator of US-China competition in the region.

“We don’t want them fighting in our backyard, let them go somewhere else,” he told Beijing and Washington last July.

Beijing is determined to court the small Pacific nation, using its largesse to build government buildings, stadiums, hospitals and roads. The $25 million conference center where the Nuku’alofa summit was held was also a gift from China.

Fearing that China could seize the opportunity to establish a permanent military base in the region, the United States and Australia have fought back by distributing aid, signing bilateral agreements and reopening long-abandoned embassies.

– ‘Polycles’ –

Fijian Prime Minister Sitiweni Rabuka called this mix of geopolitical tensions and climate threats a “multiple crisis.”

This year, to make matters worse, violence has broken out in the French territory of New Caledonia (a full member of the FIP) since May.

The Forum sought to send a “high-level fact-finding mission” to New Caledonia to help resolve the crisis, which was triggered by a project to reform the archipelago’s electoral institutions.

But the mission was postponed at the last minute amid a dispute between New Caledonian authorities and Paris over its plans.

Eleven people were killed in violence in New Caledonia on May 13 during a French parliamentary review of an electoral reform project that was accused of marginalizing the Kanak indigenous people. The reform has since been suspended, but separatists who demand its complete abandonment are still mobilizing.

The Kanak cause resonates widely in the Pacific bloc, whose former colonies are now fiercely proud of their independence. Waqa has been particularly critical of the transfer of pro-independence detainees arrested during the unrest to mainland France.

“There are significant concerns about France’s performance in New Caledonia,” said Tess Newton Cain of the Griffith Asia Institute. “The French rhetoric is really worrying for forum leaders,” she said.

The summit presented significant logistical challenges for Nuku’alofa, where many hotels were destroyed by the tsunami triggered by the catastrophic 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hungahapai volcano.

In order to properly receive the dozens of invited heads of state, heads of government, diplomats and businessmen, the capital’s 20,000 residents were asked to open their guest rooms. Fiji also sent a special veterinary team to round up and disinfect the many stray dogs that are prone to biting people on the streets.