By Scott Waide for Politok
(ABC-Australia) For decades, Pacific countries have been mere recipients of climate change policies and decisions, detached from the realities affecting families and communities.
Some of those decisions have left many countries feeling that the human face of climate change as it relates to Pacific peoples is not really understood.
For the Pacific, the threat of climate change doesn’t just mean receding coastlines. It also means the inability to grow food, relocation and countries that will cease to exist in the next 50 years.
Against that backdrop, Pacific countries have become more vocal on the world stage. At the highest levels of international government, Pacific leaders are navigating a tricky political path.
They are showing the world what climate change looks like while negotiating with bigger and more powerful countries for assistance.
In 1995, scientists became increasingly concerned about greenhouse gases and a warming climate. That year, the United Nations held its first climate change meeting for its Conference of Parties (COP).
Since then, the world’s leaders have gathered to discuss climate change. The meetings seem to get bigger every year, with headlines to match.
In 2021, Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr flew into Glasgow for COP26where he stepped into an exhibition building bustling with politicians, aides, and activists.
Former British prime minister Boris Johnson was hugging Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Prince William was mingling with Bill Gates and the motto of the week was a call to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
It’s easy to be ignored in the discussions
Mr Whipps Jr said it was easy for Pacific voices to be ignored in these high-level, high-stakes meetings.
“The hardest challenge, I think, is sometimes you get drowned out. People denying that it actually is happening and that’s probably partly because of misinformation,” he said.
“I mean, you can go to Tuvalu … you can go to the Marshall Islands. You can come to Palau. We live it. We know how it is. We have more storms. We have droughts. We have sea level rise.We have coral bleaching. We have our jellyfish that have, disappeared because of extreme heat.
“These are all the realities that we face today.
“You might as well bomb us.”
At COP26 at Glassgow, Mr Whipps Jr made headlines after he told world leaders that they might as well “just bomb” the Pacific when he drew parallels between the impact of World War II and the destruction wrought by climate change.
“You know, we in Palau suffered the impacts of World War II. It was actually Palau that’s known as the worst battle… the highest casualty rate of any war ever on that small island.
“If you go back in history, it was bombed. It was bombed so many times that there was nothing left standing on it. So, I was thinking about that. This is a battle that we have to fight to save ourselves, to defend our freedom, to defend our planet and defend our islands from being taken over.”
The cost of climate change action that Mr Whipps Jr highlights here is one of the biggest challenges Pacific countries face. Across the region rising sea levels are destroying crops, eroding coastlines and flooding villages.
Developing nations often lack the funds to rebuild.
The disconnect
Mr Whipps Jr was just one of many Pacific nations to take part in the COP meeting in Glasgow.
In a short video sent to the UN, Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister, Simon Kofe, gave a speech while standing knee-deep in the sea to demonstrate how his country was being confronted by climate change.
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape, in a recorded message, joined the call for more funds to help Pacific countries.
But PNG climate activist Vinzealhar Ainjo Nen found herself frustrated as she watched his message.
She feels like the big talks leaders have on the world stage don’t always translate into action.
“I would say that, over the last couple of years, Papua New Guinea has stepped up in terms of the government agencies actually playing a part in trying to help local communities,” she said.
“But not always the case, because sometimes when communities need to do projects or communities need to do activities surrounding climate action, we don’t really get help from the government.
“Most of the time, they tell us that it’s because we need to meet a certain requirement. Other times, it’s because they just don’t have the funding set aside for that most of the funding, they say goes towards the policy-making.”
Vinzealhar Ainjo Nen’sconcerns are echoed by many communities.
As the debates continue, the world’s first climate refugees on the Cataret Islands in Papua New Guinea’s Autonomous Region of Bougainville (AROB), remain largely forgotten in political discussions as Papua New Guinea and AROB discuss Bougainville’s political future.
Other smaller islands face a similar fate but don’t get as much attention as they need. Much of the work to deal with the effects of climate change is left to communities to handle with no government support.