Vanuatu's climate envoy slams Australia and 'world's largest greenhouse gas emitters' at ICJ

Vanuatu's Special Envoy for Climate and Environment, Ralph Regenvanu,says he is "obviously disappointed" by the Australian government's statement during the International Court of Justice (ICJ) proceedings regarding legal obligations of nations in relation to climate change.

Australia has taken a different view from Vanuatu and other Pacific Island nations.

On Monday, Australia argued that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement are the primary sources of international obligations to address greenhouse gas emissions.

Regenvanu said he was disappointed by Australia's position, along with what was shared from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and China.

"These nations, some of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters, have pointed to existing treaties and commitments that have regrettably failed to motivate substantial reductions in emissions," Regenvanu said in a statement.

"It is particularly concerning that some of these nations, upon whom we depend for aid and support, have not acknowledged the severity of the crisis or their responsibilities under international law.

"Our dependency on their assistance makes it all the more critical for them to act responsibly and in solidarity with vulnerable nations like ours."

He hopes that former colonial powers, France and the United Kingdom, will instead back Vanuatu.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific's general counsel Katrina Bullock said Australia's position "completely undermined its Pacific neighbours".

"It disregards decades of international human rights legal developments and directly contradicts the powerful legal submissions of Pacific, African, and Caribbean nations."

Australia has put in a bid to host COP31 in partnership with the Pacific.

The country, along with United States, is also trying to reassert its influence in the Pacific, as China becomes more involved in the region

The ICJ will decide on two questions: What are the obligations of states under international law to protect the climate and environment from greenhouse gas emissions?

And, what are the legal consequences for states that have caused significant harm to the climate and environment?

Fiji was the last Pacific island nation to give its submission on Wednesday.

The country's Attorney-General Graham Leung said land and resources are becoming increasingly vulnerable.

"Is it just that our people are forced to abandon their ancestral lands and heritage because of the inaction of those most responsible for climate change, is it? How do we protect the future of our people?" Leung asked the court.

He said international law requires states to not cause trans boundary harm and this also applied to greenhouse gas emissions.

"No state has the right to use its territory in a way that causes significant harm to another state."

Vanuatu started the proceedings with Regenvanu who told the ICJ countries conduct are on trial for consistently failing to rein in emissions.

"I must emphasis that since 1990 emissions have increased by over 50 percent reaching an all time high in 2023 last year, more than half of all CO2 emissions since 1750 were emitted after 1990, whatever the timeframe, there is no excuse."

The United Nations climate meeting COP29, which wrapped up last month in Baku, Azerbaijan, was labelled disappointing for the Pacific and developing countries.

Regenvanu said the Baku summit was another example of the process failing.

"The prolonged and systematic failure of the COP has cost them [Vanuatu people] their wellbeing, their cultures and even their lives.

"There is an urgent need for a collective response for climate change grounded not in political convenience but in international law."

The case landed in the ICJ after campaigning from Vanuatu students.

Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change - the group which initiated the campaign - president Cynthia Houniuhi said UN negotiations had been hijacked by major fossil fuel producers.

"As judges of the world court you possess the power to help us course correct and renew hope in humanities ability to address the greatest challenge of our time and you can do this simply by applying international law to the conduct responsible for climate change," Houniuhi from Solomon Islands said.

The Pacific Community's (SPC) director of climate change Coral Pasisi said during an online press conference that legal opinions from the ICJ can serve as a catalyst for international law's being developed to correct injustices.

"We know that a legal opinion is not legally binding but we do know a legal opinion from the International Court of Justice has a very strong moral weighting."

- RNZ

How old is the climate crisis?

Published: September 4, 2024 6.05pm BST

I was born in 1994, when the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere was measured at 360 parts per million; today it is close to 420. Furnaces, engines and former forests emitted 23 billion tonnes of this planet-warming gas in 1994; today they spew more than 37 billion tonnes. With some exceptions (economic downturns, the pandemic), humanity has released more CO₂ into the atmosphere each year than the one before it for at least two centuries.

Earth is not only hotter as a result of all this additional greenhouse gas, it is also getting hotter at a faster and faster rate. Where did it all begin? Figuring that out can tell us who or what is responsible – and what a possible solution looks like.

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage comes from our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 35,000+ readers who’ve subscribed.

One way to answer the question at the start of this newsletter is to identify when people first noticed that the planet was warming. This happened during the mid-20th century. Tragically, it did so among scientists whose funders preferred that the world remain ignorant.

The 1970s: a critical decade

One company intimately involved with the emerging science of climate change was Exxon (now ExxonMobil). Scientists working for this oil and gas giant were modelling Earth’s climate in the 1970s to understand how the increasing carbon content of the atmosphere would affect temperatures – and Exxon’s future as a business.

According to a study published in 2017 that involved scouring the company’s internal documents, Exxon scientists acknowledged back then that climate change was real and overwhelmingly caused by burning the same fossil fuels Exxon sold.

“Yet over 80% of Exxon’s editorial-style paid advertisements over the same period specifically focused on uncertainty and doubt, the study found,” says Katharine Hayhoe, professor and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University.

Exxon knew better – a lot better. An investigation published last year showed that forecasts of the future climate made by Exxon scientists in the 1970s were remarkably accurate. The company knew where the world was headed by continuing to burn coal, oil and gas and instead endeavoured to cover it up.

fiction and non-fiction books on colonialism and other topics, locates in this story the seeds of the climate crisis.

“Colonialism, genocide and structures of organised violence were the foundations on which industrial modernity was built,” he writes. By making such destruction economically rational, capitalism encouraged activities that gradually degraded Earth’s living systems, say Julia Taylor and Imraan Valodia, climate and inequality researchers familiar with Ghosh’s work.

For a sense of how this legacy still frustrates efforts to solve climate change, look no further than the international negotiations convened by the United Nations.

The COP27 summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt was the fifth to be held in Africa. One debate at COP27 asked whether African countries had the right to exploit their natural gas reserves, as many richer countries had already done. Those same “developed countries”, in UN parlance, may owe their wealth to past plunder in Africa. And despite promises to the contrary, few countries are meeting their pledges to finance renewable energy in Africa.

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Read more: China is already paying substantial climate finance, while US is global laggard – new analysis

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“Calls to cease all gas exploration in Africa that fail to account for where historical responsibility for climate change lies and the need to close the current finance gap are the most audacious kind of climate imperialism,” say Chukwumerije Okereke and Youba Sokona, environment and development experts at the University of Bristol and UCL respectively.

“On this basis, it is argued that developed countries are enacting a renewed form of colonialism – what some might call climate colonialism.”

Fiji’s ‘Rambo’ prime minister calls for Pacific to become ocean of peace

 UPDATED at 9:30 p.m. EDT on 2023-10-25

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka speaks during an event at the New South Wales Waratahs rugby team headquarters in Sydney, Oct. 16, 2023.

Fiji’s prime minister and former coup leader has called for Pacific island nations to declare their ocean territories a “zone of peace” as the United States and China jostle for influence in the region. 

In a speech to Australia’s Lowy Institute, Sitiveni Rabuka light-heartedly referred to himself as a “Rambo” figure because of his leadership of two coups in Fiji in the late 1980s and acknowledged some people might have questions about him becoming an “apostle of peace.” 

The blunt-talking Rabuka said Pacific island countries are poor, aid-dependent and have carried little weight on the world stage, but control exclusive economic zones larger than North America and Europe combined, which gives them a right to be heard and recognized. 

“History may be calling. It might be our manifest duty, destiny – to carry banners for peace and speak out for harmony in our time and forever,” he said in Canberra on Tuesday.

Rabuka is on an official visit to Australia and met with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday, who said Australia would sell 14 Bushmaster armored vehicles to Fiji for the country’s use in U.N. peacekeeping missions. 

On Thursday, the two countries agreed to cooperate on addressing cybersecurity threats and Fiji said it would become part of Australia’s e-visa pilot program.

Rabuka said he would push his peace zone idea at the 18-nation Pacific Islands Forum meeting next month in the Cook Islands and hoped member nations would back it.

Rabuka, however, has been at odds with the positions of some Pacific island leaders by backing Australia’s plan to arm itself with nuclear-powered submarines and supporting what he called the science-based view that the release into the Pacific Ocean of treated wastewater from Japan’s tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant is safe.

The peace zone could contribute, he said, to addressing the “complex West Papua question” – the conflict between Indonesia and its Papuan provinces, where an armed independence insurgency has continued for decades – or managing tribal conflicts in neighboring Papua New Guinea with the help of Fiji’s U.N. peacekeepers.

“These are just some of the initial thoughts. Extensive discussion and negotiations will be required with many stakeholders if the project for peace is to happen,” he said. 

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka (right) looks on as Pat Conroy, Australia’s minister for international development and the Pacific, speaks during an event at the New South Wales Waratahs rugby team headquarters in Sydney, Oct. 16, 2023. [Saeed Khan/AFP]

Rabuka became prime minister in December after opposition parties won a majority of votes in a national election, ending 16 years of rule by Frank Bainimarama – who first came to power in a 2006 coup – and his Fiji First Party.

Rabuka has apologized for his coups, which sought to reassert indigenous Fijian political and economic power but also unleashed violence against Indo-Fijians, who are the descendants of indentured Indian laborers brought to Fiji by the British in the late 19th century. 

As part of Rabuka’s efforts to create a legacy that is broader than his coups, one of his government’s early moves was the abolition of a Bainimarama-era media law that chilled political debate and freedom of expression.

“Some of you know, I have repented, I am reborn. My past cannot be removed but I can compensate to some extent for what I have done,” he said. “Many years ago I became a convinced democrat.” 

Fiji’s ties with China burgeoned after Australia, New Zealand and other nations attempted to punish the Pacific island country for its 2006 coup, aiding Beijing’s broader push for influence in the Pacific. 

Relations have cooled under Rabuka who put a police cooperation agreement with China under review. In his Lowy speech, Rabuka said Fiji continued to value its relationship with the world’s No. 2 economy even as its rivalry with the U.S. appeared to be intensifying.

Without naming any country, he said Fiji was grateful for the aid it received provided the country doesn’t become entrapped by it.

“Unfortunately some aid donors expect us to be compliant, to submit to their demands, so we have to be very, very careful,” he said. 

This report has been updated to replace the main photo.

UN Chief’s Call to ‘Save the Pacific to Save the World’

.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was vital “to save the Pacific to save the world” as he wrapped up his brief South Pacific tour in Vanuatu on Saturday.

Guterres has spent the past week in the region pushing for urgent action ahead of a U.N. summit in September billed as a last chance to prevent irreversible climate change.

According to the U.N., Vanuatu is the world’s most at-risk country from natural hazards, but Guterres said it was also “leading the way” with is resilience.

At a joint press conference with Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, Guterres praised the way the country had bounced back from the catastrophic Cyclone Pam which lashed the archipelago in 2015.

It claimed at least 15 lives, flattened villages and impacted nearly half the 300,000 population.

“It is clear that the Pacific is on the frontline of climate change even though they don’t contribute to climate change,” Guterres told AFP, referring to low-lying Pacific islands which are threatened by rising sea levels.

“So the Pacific has the moral authority to offer a lesson for the rest of the world. We absolutely need to save the Pacific to save the world.”

What’s Next

The U.N. target is to limit rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial revolution levels and Guterres urged governments “to understand that we need transformative measures, in industry, in agriculture and in relation to the oceans.”

“I believe it is time to recognise that we need to shift taxation away from people to carbon and pollution instead,” he said.

“We need to stop subsidies for fossil fuels. It doesn’t make any sense that taxpayers’ money is contributing to increased storms, the spread of drought, glaciers melting, corals bleaching and putting these islands in danger.”

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More on the Subject

On Saturday, The Guardian has become the first outlet to change the language it uses to cover climate change.

“Instead of ‘climate change’ the preferred terms are ‘climate emergency, crisis or breakdown’ and ‘global heating’ is favoured over ‘global warming,’ although the original terms are not banned,” Damian Carrington, the Guardian’s environment editor wrote.

https://theglobepost.com/2019/04/10/food-climate-change-solution/

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UN chief’s call to ‘save the Pacific to save the world’

Port Vila (Vanuatu) (AFP)

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was vital “to save the Pacific to save the world” as he wrapped up his brief South Pacific tour in Vanuatu on Saturday.

Guterres has spent the past week in the region pushing for urgent action ahead of a UN summit in September billed as a last chance to prevent irreversible climate change.

According to the UN, Vanuatu is the world’s most at-risk country from natural hazards, but Guterres said it was also “leading the way” with is resilience.

At a joint press conference with Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, Guterres praised the way the country had bounced back from the catastrophic Cyclone Pam which lashed the archipelago in 2015.

It claimed at least 15 lives, flattened villages and impacted nearly half the 300,000 population.

“It is clear that the Pacific is on the frontline of climate change even though they don’t contribute to climate change,” Guterres told AFP, referring to low-lying Pacific islands which are threatened by rising sea levels.

“So the Pacific has the moral authority to offer a lesson for the rest of the world. We absolutely need to save the Pacific to save the world.”

The UN target is to limit rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial revolution levels and Guterres urged governments “to understand that we need transformative measures, in industry, in agriculture and in relation to the oceans”.

“I believe it is time to recognise that we need to shift taxation away from people to carbon and pollution instead,” he said.

“We need to stop subsidies for fossil fuels. It doesn’t make any sense that taxpayers’ money is contributing to increased storms, the spread of drought, glaciers melting, corals bleaching and putting these islands in danger.”

? 2019 AFP

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