Climate Change

Regional heads of government will convene in Suva next week for the 51st Forum Leaders Meeting - their first face-to-face gathering since 2019.

The Forum Foreign Ministers meeting took place on Friday, ahead of the leaders' meeting starting on Monday.

Vanuatu is one of the most climate-vulnerable nations in the world and has embarked on an ambitious campaign to take the human rights impacts of climate change to the world's highest court.

In a letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Dr Faruqi said Australia should take a leadership position in supporting its Pacific neighbour.

She said wealthy, colonial countries, including Australia, bear the overwhelming responsibility for causing the climate crisis.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, Ian Fry, says the huge human cost of the climate crisis is being ignored.

He told the Human Rights Council that the long-term costs are not being addressed.

Mr Fry implored agencies to provide lasting support for people impacted by climate change.

"Machine guns, fighter jets... are not our primary security concern. The single greatest threat to our very existence is climate change," Fiji Defence Minister Inia Seruiratu said.

He was addressing a summit in Singapore which has focused on China-US tensions and the Ukraine war.

Cyclones have repeatedly battered Fiji and other low-lying Pacific countries.

"It threatens our very hopes and dreams of prosperity. Human-induced, devastating climate change," Mr Seruiratu told the forum, called the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Severe flooding in western Germany in July last year caused major damage. Photo: AFP

A key UN body says in a report that there must be "rapid, deep and immediate" cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Global emissions of CO2 would need to peak within three years to stave off the worst impacts.

Even then, the world would also need technology to suck CO2 from the skies by mid-century.

Prime Minister Bob Loughman announced the ministerial reshuffle a day after authorities confirmed that Covid-19 is now in the community in Port Vila.

The change in portfolios is effective immediately.

According to PM Loughman, the move is part of efforts to strengthen leadership in the Ministry of Health.

He said Minister Leingkone has experience with pandemics and natural disasters since 2020.

Photo Government Media  Caption: PM Bob Loughman announces the ministerial changes 

Only a handful of female leaders including New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern are on the United Nations' climate panel.

The others include German chancellor Angela Merkel, Barbados' president Mia Mottley, Iceland's prime minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas and the head of UN Climate Change Patricia Espinosa.

Many governments claim that 45 percent of their COP26 teams are women.

The 2015 Paris Agreement commits countries to limit the global average temperature rise to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for 1.5C.

Scientists have said crossing the 1.5C threshold risks unleashing far more severe climate change effects on people, wildlife and ecosystems.

Preventing it requires almost halving global CO2 emissions by 2030 from 2010 levels and cutting them to net-zero by 2050 - an ambitious task that scientists, financiers, negotiators and activists at COP26 are debating how to achieve and pay for.

The EU's Ambassador to the Pacific, Sujiro Seam, who's at the UN Climate Conference, said all stakeholders lobbied for an ambitious outcome and accessibility to climate funding.

Mr Seam said the EU will need to show the Pacific how best it can support the implementation of the recently adopted Climate Change Act.

"This is a package of available financing of 197 million Euros, almost 500 million Fijian dollars for the Years 2021 to 2027. This will be implemented in the countries of the Pacific with a very strong focus on climate change."

A call for action is underway by the secretariat at the UN Climate Conference (COP26) in Glasgow.

The Director of SPREP's Climate Resilence Program, Tagaloa Cooper, said the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has highlighted the urgency with which the world needs to act.

Cooper, who's in Glasgow for the UN summit, said it's critical the Pacific voice is heard at COP26 and "our ambitions to limit emissions are realised as the people of the Pacific's very existence depends on it."