Climate Change

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.

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."

World leaders have agreed a deal that aims to halt and reverse global deforestation over the next decade as part of a multibillion-dollar package to tackle human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

Xi Jinping, Jair Bolsonaro and Joe Biden are among the leaders who will commit to the declaration at Cop26 in Glasgow on Tuesday to protect vast areas, ranging from the eastern Siberian taiga to the Congo basin, home to the world’s second largest rainforest.