Climate Change

Pacific Community Director-General, Dr Colin Tukuitonga, has highlighted climate change, youth, oceans and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the organisation’s inaugural statement at UN headquarters, made during the UN Summit for the Adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

“The global community has adopted a new Sustainable Development Agenda, and a new global agreement on climate change is expected in Paris later this year.  Let me say that from our perspective there cannot be Sustainable Development Goals without a binding agreement in Paris.

 The leaders discussed the issue of Climate Change at the margins of the 70th UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

Prime Minister Sogavare said the meeting concluded with a resolution by the Pacific SIDS Leaders to speak with one firm voice on climate change as agreed upon in the Suva Declaration on Climate Change.

The Suva Declaration emanated from the recent Pacific Islands Development Forum held in Suva, Fiji.

He was speaking at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York.

“Many developing countries do not have the financial resources to do what is needed to fulfil the goals. Many countries have the ideas, the plans and the resolve to act; but do not have the financial backing they need,” he said.

“If we can recognise that the lack of funding is what can hold many of us back, then it should be one of the key critical issues to be discussed in this summit. We have our goals. Now, how do we get there? We must make affordable financing for sustainable progress a reality.

The agreement will accelerate investments in clean energy and spur a global, low-carbon transformation well before the end of the century, consistent with a below 2 degrees Celsius pathway.

“Leaders expressed their resolve to finalize a durable, meaningful agreement in Paris that applies to all countries,” Ban told reporters following a high-level working lunch held on the margins of the UN Sustainable Development Summit, which opened in New York on Friday and wraps up later today.

When the pontiff called on Congress to take "courageous action" on climate change, he also talked about the role he sees for technology in the world, quoting a papal encyclical published earlier this year.

“We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology,” Francis said, “to devise intelligent ways of developing and limiting our power, and to put technology at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral."

Twenty seven climate justice activist, mostly women were detained by Police Wednesday for protesting outside the Australian High Commission.

“If Australia and New Zealand really care about the Pacific as a partner, they must stand with us to call for global climate justice at the upcoming COP21 summit in Paris later this year,” said the protesters.

The peaceful demonstration included civil society organizations, women’s groups and students who urged the Australian and New Zealand governments to support the Pacific call at the COP21 summit in Paris, France in November.

The Commonwealth gold medal winning weightlifter says it will be scary for the Kiribati family being deported from New Zealand after losing a bid to be declared climate change refugees.

He says it is hard to live in the country which has a grim future and the children will find it scary when the ocean comes and covers the land.

He says the case has helped get the message out about the effects of climate change even though it was not successful.

According to a multi-agency study published this week in Nature Geoscience the predicted increase of severe El Nino and La Nina events will bring increased storm events with extreme coastal flooding and erosion across the Pacific.

Patrick Barnard from the US Geological Survey says other studies have analysed coastal impacts at local and regional levels but this is the first to look at patterns for the whole of the Pacific.

It will be presented to the United Nations General Assembly in New York this month.

The UN meeting will be held on September 25-27 in New York to formally adopt an ambitious new sustainable development agenda.

This momentous agenda will serve as the launch pad for action by the international community and by national governments to promote shared prosperity and well-being for the next 15 years.

The government MP says he is working hard on issues like overpopulation to help Kiribati people stay where they are.

Tabai's comments come as New Zealand deported a Kiribati man who failed to get climate change refugee status.

He says he can understand why the family wanted to stay in New Zealand because Kiribati faces many problems.

"Sure, it's hard living, it's a hard place to survive but it's still a place to belong to and we have to make it work."

Tabai says the government wants to fight it out to ensure Kiribati people don't have to leave the country.