Caleb
Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific Journalist
The
United Nations climate conference in Brazil finished with an
“extremely weak” outcome, according to one Pacific
campaigner.
Shiva Gounden, the head of Pacific at
Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said the multilateral process
is currently being attacked, which is making it hard to
reach a meaningful consensus on decisions.
“The
credibility of COPs [Conference of Parties] is dropping
somewhat but it can be salvaged if there’s a little bit of
political will, that is visionary from across the world. The
Pacific has showed leadership in this quite a bit in the
last few COPs,” Gounden said.
He said the outcomes of
this COP and previous ones mean global temperature rise will
not be limited to 1.5C – the threshold climate scientists
say is needed to ensure a healthy planet.
“There’s
parties within the system who are attacking the science and
the facts that show that we need to really be lot more
ambitious than we are.
“If that continues there will
be a lot more faith that’s lost by a lot of people across
the world, and that can only be salvaged by political will
and the unity of people across the world.”
COP30
finished in Belém with an agreement that does not
explicitly mention cutting fossil fuels. This is despite
more than 80 countries pushing to advance previous
commitments to transition away from oil, coal and
gas.
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“I feel the [outcome] was extremely weak,”
Gounden said.
Pacific Islands Climate Action Network
(PICAN) international policy lead Sindra Sharma said the
outcome had not made much progress.
“It feels like
just a waste of time to be honest, that we haven’t been able
to close the ambition gap in any significant way, when a lot
of the two weeks was also spent on reminding us that we are
in a really bad place.
“We’re going to overshoot 1.5C
and we need to do something about it.”
The meeting did
finish a call to a least triple adaptation finance which
Sharma said is a good signal.
“But if you look at the
language, then it’s actually quite non-committal and
weak.”
COP31 will take place in Türkiye, Antalya next
year and Australia will be President of negotiations in the
lead up and at the meeting. It gives Australia significant
control over deliberations.
A pre-COP will also be
hosted in the Pacific.
Gounden said he hoped the plan
would become more clear in the next few months.
“This
is a very complicated situation where you’ve got a
negotiation president that is actually not a host of the
presidency as well as the COP president across the whole
year, so all of that stuff still needs to be clear and
specified.”
He said three different groupings need to
work together to make COP work, Türkiye, Australia and the
Pacific.
Sharma said the co-presidency between
Australia and Türkiye was unusual.
“There’s going to
be a lot of work in terms of the push and pull of how those
two presidencies are able to work
together.”
Disconnect between Australia and
Pacific
Meanwhile, Tuvalu’s Climate Minister Maina
Talia said it is disheartening the disconnect between the
words and deeds of Australia when it comes to climate
action.
Talia’s comments are part of a new report from
The Fossil Free Pacific Campaign, which argues Australia is
undermining the regional solidarity on climate.
Talia
said Australia is a long-time friend of Tuvalu, so it was
“heartbreaking to see the Albanese Government continue to
proactively support the continued expansion of the fossil
fuel industry”.
“Australia has dramatically increased
the amount of energy it generates from clean, renewable
sources. But at the same time, coal mines have been extended
and the gas industry has been encouraged to continue
polluting up to 2070,” Talia said.
“It’s a decision
that is hard to reconcile with the Government’s own net zero
by 2050 target and is incompatible with a viable future for
Tuvalu.”
In September Australia extended the North
West Shelf – one of the world’s biggest gas export
projects.
The report said Australia’s climate and
energy policies are not consistent with the action needed to
secure a 1.5C world. It said Australia now had an obligation
to align with the International Court of Justice advisory
opinion in July which found states could be held legally
responsible for their greenhouse gas
emissions.
University of Melbourne’s Dr Elizabeth
Hicks, a legal academic who was in the report, told RNZ
Pacific the advisory opinion is a “real game changer” for
Australia’s legal obligations.
“We’ve seen that
Australian executive government, both under liberal and
labour, governments continue to approve new fossil fuel
projects and industries receive significant subsidies,”
Hicks said.
Australia is the leading donor to Pacific
Island countries, making up 43 percent of official
development finance.
Hicks said, Australia positions
itself as part of the Pacific family, with the nation giving
aid and acting as a security partner.
But equally
Australia is responsible for the vast majority of emissions
coming from the Pacific and had done very little to limit
fossil fuel expansion, she said.
Individuals and
groups could bring lawsuits against their own countries for
failing to comply with the court’s opinion, and states could
also return to the International Court of Justice to hold
each other to account.
The decision by the world’s top
court has opened the possibility for countries to sue each
other.
“This is placing Australia, right now in a very
uncertain position. It would not be helpful for Australia’s
domestic credibility on climate policy, or regionally in the
Pacific context, to have proceedings brought against
it.”
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