Pacific nations have called for a major increase in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, warning that every additional fraction of a degree of warming will intensify rising seas, extreme weather and the damage already confronting vulnerable island communities.
The appeal came at a ministerial climate meeting in Fiji on Wednesday, where representatives from more than 50 countries gathered ahead of the COP31 climate conference in Turkey in November. Pacific governments are using the meeting to press their priorities into international negotiations, including stronger access to climate finance, protection of the oceans and renewed efforts to keep global warming within the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit above pre-industrial levels.
The target is becoming increasingly difficult to meet. United Nations projections indicate that global temperatures are expected soon to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius, while Pacific leaders argue that the consequences of crossing the threshold are already visible across their region.
“We are hurtling past the 1.5-degree temperature limit,” Fiji’s climate minister Lynda Tabuya told delegates at the opening of the pre-COP ministerial negotiations.
Tabuya pointed to changes experienced by Pacific communities as evidence of the consequences. “The data simply confirm what Pacific nations can see,” she said, referring to tides reaching homes, reefs that have lost the appearance remembered by older generations and villages that have already been relocated.
She rejected the idea that exceeding the 1.5-degree target should simply be accepted as an unavoidable outcome. “Overshoot is not a verdict we accept quietly … keeping 1.5 alive is the primary legal obligation and duty we are here to uphold,” she said.
The meeting followed a gathering in Fiji on Tuesday by a group of mostly Pacific island leaders after a visit to Tuvalu, one of the world’s most vulnerable atoll nations. The leaders adopted a declaration calling for “deep, rapid and sustained emissions reductions”.
The declaration, titled Taku Pakasoa, uses a Tuvaluan concept referring to the strength found through unity and collective action. It states that every fraction of a degree of additional warming accelerates climate impacts and increases the risk of irreversible loss and damage.
For Pacific countries, the concern extends beyond the temperature recorded at the point when global warming reaches its highest level. Dechen Tsering, director of the Regional Office of Asia Pacific at the UN Environment Programme, said exceeding 1.5 degrees and suffering significant environmental damage was now unavoidable.
But she warned that the duration of the overshoot would have lasting consequences. “Pacific risks will outlast the temperature peak,” Tsering said. She added that each additional 100 years spent above 1.5 degrees would commit the world to about 40 centimetres of additional median sea-level rise by 2300 compared with a pathway in which temperatures did not overshoot the target.
The warning gives particular significance to the demands of Pacific island states, where low-lying communities are already exposed to rising seas and the effects of climate change. The leaders’ declaration argues that limiting warming is not simply a question of reaching a temperature threshold but of reducing the duration and extent of any period above it.
Climate finance is another central priority for the Pacific nations at the Fiji negotiations. Governments in the region are seeking better access to financial resources as they confront the consequences of a changing climate, alongside international measures to protect the oceans.
The talks are intended to shape priorities before COP31 in Turkey, where governments will continue negotiations over emissions reductions and other elements of global climate policy. The Fiji meeting therefore provides Pacific states with an opportunity to press their concerns before the wider negotiations begin.
Murat Kurum, Turkey’s environment minister and president of COP31, said limiting the extent of any overshoot of the 1.5-degree target was a shared objective at the summit.
“I believe in this wholeheartedly,” Kurum told delegates.
For Pacific governments, however, the issue is already being measured not only in global temperature statistics but in changing coastlines, damaged ecosystems and communities forced to move. Their position at the Fiji meeting is that keeping the 1.5-degree goal alive requires sustained global emissions reductions even as forecasts indicate that the threshold is likely to be exceeded.
