Climate Change

It has been almost eight years since 195 countries signed the Paris Agreement and promised to cut their emissions.

The United Nations measured their progress in its latest report, part of an overall 'global stocktake' that will form the basis of the COP28 summit later this year.

University of Canterbury political science professor Bronwyn Hayward said the results were mixed.

"This is telling us how the world is progressing, which is not well," she said.

"Not as absolutely terrible as it could be, but we're still heading for a 2.5C warmer world."

The UN Committee have affirmed for the first time that climate change is affecting children's rights to life, survival and development.

'General Comment No. 26' specifies that countries are responsible not only for protecting children's rights from immediate harm, but also for foreseeable violations of their rights in the future.

It found the climate emergency, collapse of biodiversity and pervasive pollution - "is an urgent and systemic threat to children's rights globally".

Several Pacific nations are competing at the World Athletics Championships being held in Budapest, Hungary.

Rising sea levels in the Pacific region have put the future of several nations at risk, and World Athletics President Sebastian Coe has acknowledged that some IAAF members "probably will not be in existence in the next 20 years".

World Athletics head of sustainability Bob Ramsak chaired a panel discussion with officials from the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Samoa, Tuvalu and Vanuatu entitled 'Sport on the Climate Change Front Lines'.

Doug Emhoff, the husband of US vice president Kamala Harris, also announced on his visit to Apia that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will provide extra expertise to the Pacific to assess risks and prepare plans.

This includes committing $US117,000 to strengthen Samoa's National Tsunami Ready Program.

This includes tsunami hazard risk assessment and inundation mapping, community preparedness and response, evacuation mapping and response planning, and tsunami warning.

US researchers said the new record was the highest in any instrumental record dating back to the end of the 19th century.

Scientists believe a combination of a natural weather event known as El Niño and mankind's ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide are driving the heat.

Last month has also been confirmed as the world's warmest June yet recorded.

Scientists at the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction said that the world's average temperature had reached 17.01C on 3 July, breaking the previous record of 16.92C that had stood since August 2016.

It's the major outcome of the 79th Commission Session of the UN Economic and Social Commission of the Asia-Pacific (ESCAP) which concluded in Bangkok, Thailand over the weekend.

The 10 resolutions include promoting clean energy technologies, improving power system connectivity and low-emission mobility, implementing early warning systems and strengthening the use of climate change-related statistics.

Executive secretary of ESCAP, Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, said the global climate fight would be won or lost in this decade.

The two-day meeting on 20 and 21 March was the first political high-level meeting following up on COP27.

The current and incoming COP presidencies of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are hosting the meeting in the Danish capital together with Denmark.

The ministerial meeting aims to lay the path to a successful COP28 delivering on the Paris Agreement targets and COP27 conclusions.

Fiame Naomi Mata'afa said more needed to be done to combat climate change as she called on the government to ensure regional perspectives remained on the agenda.

"The best example of that is an opportunity for ensuring civic participation - either by sponsorship or using your airplanes just to get us around," she told the Lowy Institute on Monday.

"Also helping refine the message, taking the message to other forums that the Pacific doesn't necessarily have a voice at."

In the 2022-2023 report released by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, gender-based violence and natural disasters are other key priority focus areas, together with illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU), cybercrime and transnational organised crime.

RNZ Pacific reports Forum Secretary General Henry Puna said: "To achieve the Forum's vision of peace, harmony, security, social inclusion and prosperity, it is important to have regional security mechanisms that help address traditional and non-traditional issues in the Pacific region".

She made the remarks while addressing the 10th Summit of the OACPS Head of State and Government Friday in Angola’s capital Luanda.

“And likewise for the wider membership of the OACPS –SIDS, LDCs and LLDCs. We must collectively demand all countries, especially the big emitters, to make rapid, deep and sustained reductions in emissions to keep the 1.5 degrees goal alive.