Climate Change

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.

Samoan meteorological services expect swell heights to remain between 2.5m and 3m but are expecting conditions to ease over the weekend.

Leading forecaster Aloali'i Liu said the unusual phenomenon is linked to climate change.

"I believe there is an effect of climate change as of now. Although it is happening within the dry season which is something that is a very rare occasion however, there was an event that was like this recently in 2018."

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.

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.

Prime Minister Mata'afa is not attending COP26 in Glasgow this year, however addressed world leaders through a video message.

She called for world leaders to act with the same urgency as that applied for the global Covid-19 vaccination programme.

"The development of Covid-19 vaccines was the fastest in history. Its rollout around the world at a large scale required a massive global coordinated effort.

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.