COP31 organisers aim to break negotiating deadlock with bold climate blueprint
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Pacific leaders and delegates posing for a family photo at the conclusion of the final day of the Pacific Pre-COP31 Summit in Nadi, Fiji.
PHOTO: AFP
- - COP31 organisers in Turkey and Australia plan a presidency-led decision to break logjams and push for a stronger climate action statement.
- - Pacific leaders used the Fiji and Tuvalu pre-COP31 to demand more climate finance, ocean protection and faster action on fossil fuels, as their region faces rising seas and coral loss.
- - Officials and activists warned that Pacific island nations are highly exposed, with Tuvalu facing possible relocation of its population.
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NADI, Fiji – Organisers of an upcoming UN climate summit in Turkey said on Oct 8 they would prepare a summary text for countries to adopt, as they lead a push for “ambitious” action on keeping the goal of global temperature rise of 1.5 deg C within reach.
The United Nations-sponsored global climate summit – known as COP31 – will be held in Antalya in November, following a “pre-COP” meeting in Fiji and Tuvalu, which wrapped up on Oct 8.
Co-organisers Australia and Turkey vowed on Oct 8 to get negotiators to vote on a so-called presidency-led decision that they would have prepared beforehand.
That would, in theory at least, set a firm and realistic agenda, cutting the endless hours of gruelling negotiations that often dominate COP meetings before votes are taken on individual technical points.
That decision, they said, would focus on binding agreements like one towards electrification, replacing technologies that burn fossil fuels directly, like diesel cars and gas heating, with electric alternatives.
“We feel that a presidency-led decision gives us the best chance of a strong and ambitious outcome at COP31,” Australia’s Climate Minister Chris Bowen said.
“To send the signal to follow the science to keep 1.5 degrees within reach, against the backdrop of the scientific evidence that we will overshoot it. We’ve got to overshoot it for as little and as short as possible,” he said.
Scientists agree that warming above 1.5 deg C relative to pre-industrial times poses grave risks, and nearly 200 nations committed a decade ago to try and keep global temperature rises to this safer threshold.
But with rising sea levels already lapping the coastlines of Pacific nations and the corals that sustain them dying, more firm action on ending the use of polluting fossil fuels is needed.
Rising sea levels are already lapping the coastlines of Pacific nations like Fiji.
PHOTO: AFP
“The outcomes of this week’s talks are a drop in the ocean given the scale of need, and urgency of the crisis our communities are facing,” Shiva Gounden, head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said.
“It is like taking a glass of water to a burning house if we do not urgently act to address the root cause of the existential threat facing Tuvalu, Fiji and all Pacific countries: fossil fuel expansion,” she said.
Vulnerable
Pacific nations used the pre-COP platform to push for more backing.
The South Pacific is among the regions of the world most vulnerable to global warming, from rising seas jeopardising homes to increasing temperatures causing coral bleaching.
In a push to highlight the urgent need for action, leaders this week visited Tuvalu, a remote island nation already laying plans to relocate its population of 10,600 if the island nation is consumed by the ocean.
And the region’s leaders pushed throughout the summit this week for oceans and climate finance to be top of the agenda at COP31, as well as maintaining the 1.5 deg C target.
But regional delegates admitted the process is tiring.
“The way that the COP process works is not great, I’ll be very frank,” Pacific climate envoy Tina Eonemto said.
But she said Pacific nations have put their hopes “front and centre” and welcomed plans for a presidency-led decision at the end of COP31.
At a time of rising military budgets in the face of mounting geopolitical tensions, COP31 President Murat Kurum, who is also Turkey’s environment minister, urged nations to take the climate crisis as seriously as they did defence.
“Tuvalu is disappearing. What good does it do if we take this decision? What good is defending your borders if there is no livable world left?“ Kurum said.
Sea levels are rising at a record pace, driven by warming oceans and glacier melt, according to an August UN report.
Up to 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050, with Pacific island countries experiencing sea level rise at twice the global average, it said.
One Pacific delegate said he hopes that voices from the region will be “treated equally and fairly and with all respect” in Antalya.
“That’s the bottom line,” he said. “We have a right to life, and life is a human right.” AFP