A group of Pacific Island elders, including several former national leaders, have taken out a full-page ad in the Fiji Times calling on their countries not to support Australia’s plan to host a UN climate summit until it stops expanding fossil fuels.
The ad on Wednesday by the group the Pacific Elders’ Voice was timed to coincide with a visit to Fiji by the Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen.
Under a picture of Anthony Albanese and the minister for international development and the Pacific, Pat Conroy, the ad urged Pacific leaders not to quickly back Australia’s request that they join a bid to co-host the Cop31 UN climate conference in 2026.
“The Australian government has promised to ‘stand shoulder to shoulder’ with its Pacific family in response to the climate crisis,” the ad said.
“Yet the response to our natural disasters, sea level rise, heat [and] food insecurity has been to pursue more gas and coal projects – the very thing driving the climate crisis.”
The Pacific Elders’ Voice said while the world had moved into what the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called an era of global boiling, Australia was stuck in “the era of fossil fuel expansion”. Its members include former leaders of the Marshall Islands (Hilda Heine), Kiribati (Anote Tong), Tuvalu (Enele Sopoaga) and Palau (Tommy Remengesau).
“We have been clear that standing shoulder to shoulder with us must mean more than expecting to co-host a UN climate change conference in 2026 with us,” they said.
“Australia has ignored our pleas for years. Why then must Pacific leaders be in such a hurry to show support for Cop31? What is the rush?”
Australia is considered well-placed to host Cop31, having won support from several members of the “Western Europe and Others” group that will decide where the meeting is held, but has made clear it wants it to be a joint bid. Bowen has repeatedly emphasised the Pacific’s role.
The climate minister spent three days in the Fijian capital of Suva this week, convening a meeting of Pacific climate change ministers and attending a two-day regional UN climate discussion. Speaking before flying out on Wednesday, Bowen said there was strong support for an Australia-Pacific Cop bid.
“We talked about how we might be able to work together to ensure that this is truly and genuinely a Pacific COP,” he said.
“As I said to the ministers, I want people to leave COP 31, if Australia hosts it, saying ‘Wow, that really was a Pacific COP’. And by that it means a chance to elevate Pacific issues at a time when the Pacific has the world’s attention.”
The Albanese government has been criticised for approving new fossil fuel developments, including the creation of large new gas fields. It has committed $1.5bn to Darwin’s Middle Arm industrial precinct, which a departmental brief to the government described as “a key enabler” for development of the Beetaloo Basin, a potentially large source of gas.
Speaking in Suva, Bowen said Australia was moving from getting 35% of electricity from renewable energy to 82% in 2030. He said the country “increasingly has become a renewable energy superpower” and was working with its major fossil fuel customer countries, such as Korea and Japan, to help them transition to clean generation.
“They’re on a journey. We’re not going to remove coal and gas tomorrow, nobody really is expecting [that],” he said. “But it’s been a good discussion [with Pacific climate ministers] about how fast the transition in Australia is going, and it’s going very, very fast..”
The Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, a collection of nongovernment groups, said it was concerned about Australia’s eagerness to secure early support for the climate conference bid.
“While we acknowledge Australia’s aspiration to lead in hosting Cop31, Pacific governments must seek tangible evidence of Australia’s dedication to substantial climate action, especially with regard to fossil fuels,” the network said in a statement.
The next major UN climate summit, Cop28, will be held in the United Arab Emirates, starting in late November.
