The failure of climate finance in the South Pacific
Recently climate change has made its way to the forefront of the international agenda. Yet many of the nations that will be hit hardest by the effects of global warming are often absent from the discussion. The importance of the environment as a victim of global warming is key, but the human victims of climate change must not be neglected. So why is it that so little focus is placed on the small low-lying islander nations whose peoples’ lives are already being significantly affected by changing weather patterns?
Although at many high-level international forums and meetings significant amounts of money have been pledged towards fighting climate change across the world this proposed funding is failing to help protect the most vulnerable from the effects of changing weather patterns. A report released recently by Caritas Pacific highlights how people in the smaller South Pacific islander nations are already beginning to suffer significant numbers casualties due to climate change-related extreme weather patterns in the region.
A majority of the islander nations are low lying land areas -such as Samoa, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji – meaning they are more vulnerable to the negative impacts of global warming. The region is prone to experiencing extreme temperature variability as well as rising sea levels, dramatic changes in patterns of rainfall and storm surges. Such fluctuations are having a damaging effect on both the biodiversity and ecosystems of the islander nations which threatens the water and food supplies of the local communities across the Pacific.
Many of the island nations in the region are still classed as ‘developing’ and therefore often cannot independently and effectively tackle issues surrounding global mitigation through international negotiations nor do they possess the resources to undertake large scale local adaptation and prevention measures. So why is it that a series of countries which emit well below 1% of all greenhouse gases produced across the globe but who are arguably most seriously affected by changing weather patterns denied easy access to the large sums of climate finance?
The communities throughout the Australian continent have been attempting to adapt to their changing environment including the expansion of urbanisation policies. However, the processes to access funds from the international community to support such schemes have been criticised for being too complex and difficult. It has been suggested such processes urgently need to be simplified in order to allow the small islander nations to access the funds more quickly which they so desperately require to prevent future climate-related deaths within their populations.
This sentiment was reiterated earlier this summer by the Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama at a one-day conference on climate change in Tuvalu. In his speech Bainimarama warned about the deadly effects of global warming in the South Pacific and also appealed to Australia to move away from its reliance on coal-powered energy and to recognise the threat fossil fuel caused climate change poses to small nearby nations. This discussion accompanied Australia’s promise to pledge $500m (£266m) to climate change prevention in the South Pacific which has received criticism on many levels.
Increased access to funds of climate finance like the sum promised by the Australian government are key in order to enable the South Pacific region to practically prepare itself for the future rising sea levels and accompanying changing weather patterns. However, some politicians and researchers have begun to suggest that accessible funds are not enough without larger Western countries taking greater responsibility for reducing their carbon emissions.
The founder of the Kiribati Climate Action Network Claire Naterea addresses these very issues in a recent interview with the Guardian newspaper in which she discusses the situation in Kiribati and Australia. Anterea claims that promises of large sums of money from governments like Australia can only help the South Pacific adapt for so long and that eventually, adaption will no longer be enough in order to protect the region's people. Therefore, Aterea and many others like her, are attempting to place more pressure on industrial countries to reduce their carbon emissions output in order to slow the rate at which climate change worsens.
It is not just in its accessibility that climate finance is failing the South Pacific but also in terms of the attitudes of the countries providing it. Simon Bradshaw – the leader of Oxfam’s climate advocacy in Australia - although not denying the importance of funding climate change adaption schemes in the South Pacific - emphasises that the provision of funds to more vulnerable nations should not excuse more industrial and economically developed countries from reducing their negative contributions to global warming. Climate advocates around the world argue that Climate finance should not act as a ‘get out of jail free’ pass for those nations producing significant amounts of greenhouse gases.
The issues of climate change and climate finance in the South Pacific are still much ignored by a majority of the Western press and the region appears still to lack a voice within the international climate change agenda. Not only is funding for climate adaptions from the international community not reaching the islander nations fast enough but climate finance itself has been suggested to have been being used as an excuse for some of the larger producers of carbon emissions to not take greater action to prevent the progression of global warming.
