Pacific leaders have opened a UN-backed climate meeting in Fiji with an urgent appeal to the world: listen to the communities already living with the consequences of a warming planet.
The gathering in the Fijian city of Nadi is focused on the Pacific, one of the regions most exposed to climate change. Rising seas are threatening homes and entire communities, while hotter waters are driving widespread coral bleaching.
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Talks in Nadi and on the atoll nation of Tuvalu are serving as a prelude to COP31, the larger UN climate summit due to take place in Turkey next month.
Pacific leaders are urging governments to uphold the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C, expand access to climate finance and give greater weight to the damage being inflicted on the world’s oceans.
Lynda Tabuya addresses the Pacific Pre-COP31 Summit
Sea levels are climbing at an unprecedented rate as oceans warm and glaciers melt, according to a UN report.
The report, published in August, warned that as many as 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050. It said Pacific Island countries are experiencing sea-level rise at twice the global average.
It also pointed to a major shortfall in funding. Developing countries require between $310bn and $365bn to adapt to climate change, yet received only $26bn (€23bn) in adaptation finance in 2023.
“Today in Fiji, we are again calling on the world to match ambition with delivery,” said Australia’s Climate Minister Chris Bowen, who is also president of negotiations for COP31.
Chris Bowen said pre-COP would focus on “capturing, capitalising on, and putting to work the knowledge of those who’ve been dealing with climate change here at its forefront”
Regional leaders have described the pre-COP gathering as an opportunity to bring the global climate debate directly to the Pacific.
Limited guest list
But officials have acknowledged that the list of attendees will be shorter than they had hoped.
Fewer than a dozen national leaders have publicly confirmed that they plan to attend.
Australia announced last month that 4,000 people from 60 countries would take part, though it did not provide a detailed breakdown of the participants.
Those expected to attend include Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal. Nepal is still dealing with the aftermath of August’s Himalayan floods, which killed nearly 1,500 people and left 5,800 missing in Nepal and China.
Senior delegates taking part in the Pacific talks will also make a one-day visit to Tuvalu, where authorities are already planning for the relocation of the population as rising seas encroach on the low-lying nation.
Funafuti, the capital, rises to only two metres above sea level at its highest point. Two of Tuvalu’s nine coral atolls have already been largely overwhelmed by encroaching waters.
‘Act now decisively’
“Sea-level rise is not a future threat, it is a present reality,” Tuvalu Prime Minister Feleti Teo told the UN General Assembly before the climate talks began.
“Tuvalu’s message is clear: the world must act now decisively, collectively, and with urgency to protect the future for generations to come.”
Only a handful of leaders are expected to join the Tuvalu leg of the trip
“It does make you think nobody cares,” said marine scientist Rajneel Singh, who was part of a team that documented extensive coral die-off around Tuvalu.
“It’s very, very sad.”
Extreme heat putting pregnant women & newborns at risk
UN Climate Chief Simon Stiell is expected to warn the summit that extreme heat is placing pregnant women and newborn babies at growing risk.
Mr Stiell will refer to a new survey in which more than two-thirds of health professionals across five continents said they had witnessed complications linked to intense heat over the past five years.
“Rising temperatures mean rising danger in pregnancy.
“Climate-driven extreme heat during pregnancy is increasingly linked to premature birth, still birth, low birth weight, and maternal complications.
“The picture is clear and very disturbing: as extreme heat worsens, pregnancy and birth are now a new faultline in the global climate crisis and one which is potentially fatal,” Mr Stiell said in a pre-speech statement.
The survey, commissioned by the charitable foundation Wellcome, questioned 1,000 midwives and doctors in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Brazil and Zimbabwe.
Wellcome chairwoman and former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said climate change was exposing mothers and babies to increasing danger.
“Extreme heat is an invisible killer, but pregnant women must not be invisible. Leaders have the evidence and solutions they need – now they must act,” Gillard said.
Nearly all of the midwives and doctors surveyed said they had treated mothers or babies affected by extreme heat.
About one-third reported seeing low birth weight or restricted growth, feeding problems, dehydration or heat-related illness that they attributed to extreme heat.
