Pacific leaders

Japan to host PALM8

Japanese ambassador to Fiji Masahiro Omura said the meeting was held once in every three years since 1997.

“This is an important meeting where leaders of 14 Pacific Island countries get together and we are hoping they all will participate again come next year,” he said.

Omura said Japan was also promoting various forms of exchange programmes for Fiji.

Pacific leaders in Paris for climate summit

Two years after the Paris agreement France's president has called together the world's financial and political leaders to come up with action to meet its goals.

Pacific leaders have long called for more financial commitment and innovation to avoid catastrophe.

Emmanuel Macron's main focus for the One Planet Summit is to determine how the financial sector can better support climate action.

The changes necessary will not pay for themselves and innovation is needed.

Pacific leaders honoured in Pō Fiefia

Former All Black Sir La'auli Michael Jones and Dame Valerie Adams were among the 40 Pacific leaders honoured for their services to their communities over the last three years.

Minister for Pacific Peoples Alfred Ngaro says leaders like La'auli Sir Michael Jones and Dame Valerie Adams pave the way for the future of Pacific success.

"We're breaking ceiling. We're achieving things to show that not only we can be great in Pacific but we can be great in mainstream as well," he says.

Pacific states pressure G20 on climate change

Following this week's Climate Action Pacific Partnership (CAPP) event in Fiji, 12 Pacific states called for action from the world's most powerful nations attending this weekend's G20 summit in Germany.

Describing themselves as being on the front line of climate change, the Pacific states expressed deep concern that the United States government had indicated its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and urged the US to reconsider.

Climate action needs to be accelerated - Pacific leaders

And that would be one of the critical issues that the Pacific would push for through Fiji's presidency of COP23 in Bonn, Germany in November.

The Fiji Times said the agreement was reached by leaders at the end of the two-day Climate Action Pacific Partnership conference in Suva yesterday.

The draft action document that would shape the global action at COP23 was not released at the close of the conference on Tuesday as it needed to be sent back to all stakeholders for their feedback in the next 14 days.

Pacific leaders prepare for major oceans summit

This came at a preparatory meeting for Pacific leaders ahead of June's major United Nations Conference on Oceans in New York, which is to be co-hosted by Fiji and Sweden.

One of the central aims of the conference was to identify ways and means to support the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14.

This goal concerns conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources.

Pacific leaders discuss united front for UN oceans conference

Fiji's Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, hosted the meeting on Friday as his country prepares to take the presidency of the conference along with Sweden.

He told the gathering that he hoped the small island developing states of the Pacific could front the conference as one united voice.

The meeting discussed implementing a sustainable development goal which aims to conserve and sustainably use the ocean and marine resources.

 

Pacific leaders raise climate change issue at Leaders Summit

The conference began on Thursday, Sept 1, with Prime Minister Peter O’Neill Chairing a Special Meeting Of The Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders Standing Committee where key issues on the agenda were finalised.

The number one issue on the minds of Pacific Leaders is climate change,” O’Neill said.

“People and communities in the Pacific are in grave danger and countless lives threatened by extreme weather brought about by climate change and our Leaders are demanding action,” O’Neill said, as the Chair of the Conference.

Regional security on Pacific's agenda at US talks

RNZ reports the Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O'Neill is chairing the 10th Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders which is meeting in Hawaii.

He says he expects the Pacific island countries to come out of the discussion with the US holding a stronger collective perspective on the region's key issues including climate change and security.

Mr O'Neill says the meeting provides an opportunity to work with US officials towards the change of government in the US so leaders can hit the ground running when the new President is inaugurated in January.

President Obama hears concerns of Pacific and Caribbean leaders

The meeting is an attempt by both Parties to explore options on key negotiating positions of small and vulnerable nations at the frontline of climate change.

The meeting on the margins of the COP21 conference in Le Bourget was ‘useful’ according to President Tong.

The three Pacific Leaders invited to the talk, Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Papua New Guinea – put to President Obama the need for ‘loss and damage’ and the global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees’ in the proposed Paris Agreement.