Pacific ‘Pre-COP’ draws attention to islands’ plight

For small island states, “the collapse of habitability has already begun”, stated a recent UN report on climate change. Storm surges are pushing further inland, farmland is turning salty and coral reefs are being lost, it warned.

This is especially true of the Pacific, where islanders have sometimes had to rely on stunts, such as holding press conferences knee-deep in seawater, to get the world’s attention.

But this year, the UN’s so-called Pre-COP – typically a rather dry technical meeting that precedes the main climate conference – was turned into a special event to bring attention to the region’s plight.

The summit in Fiji earlier this month was attended by around 4,000 people including national leaders, government officials, Indigenous communities, and scientists.

A delegation visited Tuvalu’s Funafuti atoll to witness how coastal defences are having to be strengthened to cope with rising sea levels and intensifying storms caused by climate change.

Leaders of 14 governments, mostly from the Pacific island states but also Australia, Timor-Leste and Mauritius, attended. The European Union’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, and the heads of the Green Climate Fund and the Asian Development Bank were also there.

Media commented on the lack of national leaders from beyond the Pacific, but Pacific leaders have hit back, defending the significance of those who did attend.

“I read recently that all the big names were missing so let’s talk about size for a moment,” Pacific Islands Forum chair and Palau president, Surangel Whipps Jr, told an event in Australia. “Pacific states are custodians of nearly 20% of our Earth’s surface … an area larger than Russia, China, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Australia, and India combined.”

Shamini Selvaratnam, director of international climate and clean energy at the Ocean Conservancy NGO, tells Dialogue Earth: “The story of this Pre-COP, who was or wasn’t in the room, it’s about whose voices were finally much closer to the centre of the room – these are voices we don’t get to hear often in other spaces.”

The mood was a sense of “urgency and determination” with visitors faced with the reality of the region’s need to cope with climate change, particularly sea-level rise, she says.

Pacific priorities

Fiji and the Pacific went into the Pre-COP pushing to keep the 1.5C temperature-rise threshold alive, reform access to climate finance, and get ocean governance onto the official state-led UN negotiating process at the main COP31 meeting in Turkïye in November.

The recent UN report warning of a “collapse of habitability” suggests that global temperature rise will reach at least 1.8C under even the most optimistic future. Selvaratnam says that Pacific countries were very clear in Fiji that the 1.5C goal remains a “survival threshold, not an abstract negotiating number”.

Finance to help the islands adapt was a key discussion. The emphasis was as much about getting existing finance to communities faster as about increasing the overall amount available, according to Selvaratnam.

The islands have their own ambitions for renewable energy but have complained of a lack of predictable and accessible financing to scale access to energy and maritime transport. Leaders also say bureaucracy and other barriers mean they receive funds too slowly.

“They hand us a tiny patch to cover a gaping hole. The bureaucratic process just to receive that patch is so slow that the water fills the hole while we wait. Then to rebuild the vessel so that we can survive the next storm, we are offered loans, debt that adds weight to a sinking boat packaged in red tape so thick we can barely access it,” Whipps Jr told the summit, according to Climate Home News.

The Pacific Islands Forum, which represents 18 nations and territories, has set up its own fund. Named the Pacific Resilience Facility, it is seeking USD 500 million in investments. At the Pre-COP, Fiji pledged USD 10 million to it, taking its total to around USD 190 million. While the governments of Denmark and the Netherlands announced USD 2.3 million and USD 1 million respectively.

Politicians at the opening of the Pre-COP event in Nadi, Fiji, in early October. Leaders of 14 governments attended, as did the European Union’s climate commissioner and the heads of several climate and development finance institutions (Image: Masato Kanda / Flickr, CC BY 4.0)

“These commitments are welcome and demonstrate growing support for Pacific-led solutions, but fell far short of needs,” says Rufino Varea, director of the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network.

Progress is also being made in the movement to raise the status of ocean issues within UN climate negotiations, say observers. During the Pre-COP, the Friends of the Ocean and Climate coalition delivered a joint letter signed by 105 nations to the Australian and Turkish presidencies of COP31.

It said that they should integrate ocean issues and ocean-based solutions into all aspects of the UN climate process. “The ocean should be understood not as a discrete sector or special interest, but as integral to delivering climate, economic, and resilience objectives,” it added.

In Fiji, the ocean was inherent to all discussions, Selvaratnam says. “In the Pacific, the ocean isn’t just a chapter of a climate agenda – it is the climate agenda. The Pre-COP elevated those priorities.”

The main outcome of the Pre-COP was the Taku Pakasoa Declaration, a political statement whose title means “strength in unity” in Tuvaluan. The document reiterated the priorities of the Pacific, including the need for finance and the centrality of the ocean in fixing climate problems.

“Hosting these discussions on our shores allowed our communities to shape the conversation on our own terms, amplifying Pacific voices and leadership at every level – from political leaders and civil society to faith-based organisations, traditional leaders, and grassroots communities,” says Varea. “There was a real sense of collective purpose, grounded in the understanding that our region has much to contribute to the world’s response to this crisis.”

The real test is whether political momentum on the issues raised in Fiji will lead to better negotiating outcomes in Turkïye, he says.

Selvaratnam agrees: “Visibility is valuable, but the Pacific has had visibility before. Bringing the world to the Pacific mattered, but [what] will really matter is if these priorities travel back to COP31.”