Pacific Islands tell Australia not to cop out on cutting emissions

Vanuatu’s climate minister Ralph Regenvanu has been sounding the alarm over climate change and countries’ responsibilities to the Pacific, as the four-day pre-COP31 meetings in Fiji and Tuvalu got underway in early October.

Regenvanu argues that countries need to take “urgent action” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pointing to the September United Nations Environment Program report, which found that the world is set to cross the 1.5°C Paris Agreement threshold in the next few years. It found the best-case scenario is a peak temperature of 1.8°C (others suggest 2°C), and said it is still possible to bring temperatures down to the agreed goal.

Regenvanu pointed to last year’s International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advisory opinion which found that countries have a responsibility to limit climate warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and that those responsibilities extend beyond domestic emissions.

He said unless emissions are rapidly reduced within the next four years, any overshoot of 1.5°C, “even a fraction of a degree”, means the destruction of reefs, freshwater and land.

Regenvanu said Australia’s argument that it is only responsible for cutting pollution it emits within its borders is wrong, citing the ICJ’s advisory opinion.

Since then, the High Court of Australia has ruled authorities must consider how the burning of fossil fuels, exported from this country, contributed to climate damage.

The goal of the Paris Agreement, adopted by 195 parties in Paris in 2015, is “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”. 

Australia, joint host of COP31 with Türkiye in November, has an opportunity to set a higher bar — which the Pacific has been demanding. But Chris Bowen, energy minister and chief negotiator for COP31, told The Australian in June that he will not be using his role to push for a phase-out of coal or gas exports.

Labor has approved 37 new or expanded fossil fuel projects since 2022. It is using its “middle power” status at the pre-COP meetings to push Pacific Island states to accept what it puts on the table.

Bowen and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese say they are listening to Pacific Island nations’ concerns about climate change being the real security threat.

But they are relying on a loophole in the Paris Agreement, which allows countries to avoid counting downstream, or exported, emissions from the fossil fuels it exports.

This means that Australia, the third largest exporter of coal and second largest exporter of liquefied natural gas in the world to say it is “on track” with its Paris climate goals. Australia’s 2035 climate targets only look reasonable on paper because they downplay the country’s actual contribution.

This is why Regenvanu is right to point to the ICJ’s — unfortunately non-binding — advisory opinion. It said that all states have obligations to “act” to stop significant hardship to the climate or environment. In other words, preventing climate harm is the duty of all countries, but particularly those of the Global North.

Pacific Islands nations have, for decades, been saying they must not be made a sacrifice zone.

But just like Australia’s aid program has, for years, been tied to its sub-imperial objectives in the region, so too is its climate funding.

Australia is the biggest overall donor to the Pacific region for now, although China is also increasing its development financing.

This is not going to improve while Australia’s climate “aid” to the Pacific is about funding “resilience” measures, rather than a plan to cut its own emissions, including those from fossil fuel exports.

The formal “climate” negotiations in Fiji seem have been reduced to searching for more donors for the “Pacific Resilience Facility” (PRF), which funds “⁠climate resilience” projects in the Pacific. This time around, pledges were made by Fiji, Ireland, the Netherlands and Denmark, but not  Australia.

The PRF aims to fund such projects as an early disaster response, the installation of water tanks and climate resilient agriculture and community solar energy. So far, US$180 million has been pledged by 16 “sovereign investors”. Its initial goal is US$500 million.

While such a mechanism may help out some communities on some islands, it is a rearguard market-based approach that will do nothing to stop rising sea levels — the existential threat to many small island states.

Band-aid solutions will not save the 10 Pacific islands which are slated to disappear. NASA estimates that daily high tides will submerge roughly 50% of Funafuti, home to most of the population of Tuvalu. Major parts of this populous atoll will be uninhabitable by 2050 — when Australia says it will reach net-zero emissions. More than 90% of people in Tuvalu have applied for residency or citizenship in Australia.

The only way to force Australia to be a good Pacific neighbour is to build the climate justice moment to up-end Labor’s cynical pro-corporate approach.

Socialist Alliance is campaigning for no new or expanded coal or gas projects; a ban on fracking and unconventional gas mining, and guaranteed jobs, with no loss in pay, for workers in fossil fuel industries. 

[Sydney Students for Climate is organising a ‘No cop-outs at COP31’ rally at Sydney Town Hall on October 24. Pip Hinman is a member of the Socialist Alliance National Executive. This article was updated after the recent High Court of Australia decision.]