ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENDERS OFFICE

FUNAFUTI, TUVALU - In September 2023, Tuvalu enshrined a new definition of statehood in its constitution. A world-first, the constitution asserts the State of Tuvalu will continue to exist, even if its landmass disappears under rising sea levels. In this interview, Dr Bal Kama, who advised the constitutional committee, shares some insights on this significant development for Tuvalu and beyond. Bal specialises in Pacific legal systems with expertise in Papua New Guinea constitutional law.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Many of the disasters that are currently pummelling the world with increasing intensity, from floods to heatwaves, are directly attributable to climate change.

Unexpected consequences from these events, like the deaths of thousands of emperor penguin chicks by drowning in Antarctica and starving polar bears in the Arctic Circle, are catching the world by surprise.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Australia, like many other developed nations, claims it has no responsibility for CO² emissions from the coal, iron ore and gas it exports.

If Australia accepted that responsibility it would blow its emission reduction targets sky high and fail every test of being a responsible and ethical nation.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Australia has changed considerably since the sleepy 1950s and a major influence can be put down to immigration.

Left to our own devices we’d probably still be dozing in the warm sunshine of national complacency.

Complacency about climate change and its effects is beginning to look more and more like a scourge, even a killer. And yes, we're bloody complacent

World in Chaos (Bing Image Creator)

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - The final scene in Sean O’Casey’s 1924 Dublin play, ‘Juno and the Paycock’, ends with a drunken character dropping his last sixpence on the floor and declaring "the whole world is in a terrible state o' chassis" before passing out.

‘Chassis’ was a malapropism for ‘chaos’ and ‘paycock’ was an Irish rendering of the word ‘peacock’, which Juno liked to use to describe her layabout husband, Jack.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - A few days ago, a comment by business journalist Alan Kohler in The New Daily caught my attention.

In an article, ‘Australian agriculture businesses fighting to secure the future of food,’ what particularly got me thinking was Kohler’s conclusion:

God's gift to climate change deniers, Tony Abbott (The New Daily)

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE -I recently read an interesting article in The Australian written by Greg Sheridan, with whom I frequently disagree.

In the article Sheridan asserted that achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 will be impossible unless some new forms of technology emerge.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is actively supporting Papua New Guinea to lower its greenhouse gas emissions and embrace a transformation to a green and sustainable economy. It is part of ushering in a new era to reshape our future

Students from la Salle Technical High School, Hohola (Clive Hawigen, UNDP)

DIRK WAGENER
| UNDP Resident Representative, Papua New Guinea

PORT MORESBY - Is the imminent climate catastrophe driving humanity to extinction?

How do we effectively reduce global greenhouse emissions and counter the cost-of-living crisis that is triggering hardship and poverty for billions? Humanity seems paralysed – why?

The cost of eking out a living on islands threatened by sea level rise eventually becomes too much to bear, causing families to leave and the nation to disappear. "This is how a Pacific atoll dies. This is how our islands will cease to exist”

Marshall Islands president David Kabua addresses the United Nations General Assembly last week (AP Photo by Jason DeCrow)

PIA SARKAR
| AP News | Extracts

NEW YORK - While world leaders from wealthy countries acknowledge the ‘existential threat’ of climate change, Tuvalu prime minister Kausea Natano is racing to save his tiny island nation from drowning by raising it four to five meters above sea level through land reclamation.

And while experts issue warnings about the eventual uninhabitability of the Marshall Islands, president David Kabua must reconcile the inequity of a seawall built to protect one house that is now flooding another one next door.

Dwellings damaged by a storm surge on Iama Island (John Rainbird)

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – The United Nations has declared that Australia has violated the human rights of a group of Torres Strait Islanders by failing to adequately protect them from the impacts of climate change.

Torres Strait Islanders are Indigenous Australians who live on small clusters of low-lying islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea.

The rich developed countries are arguing over the best ways to deal with climate change while urgent action is needed to save vulnerable nations, especially those in the Pacific, from disaster

Two months of dry weather has caused a five metre drop in the water level at Yonki Dam which supplies power to one-third of Papua New Guinea

RAYMOND SIGIMET

DAGUA - In the Highlands of Papua New Guinea there is a prolonged drought.

The water level of the Yonki dam near Kainantu has dropped to a critical level, threatening not only water supplies but the generation of electricity for most of the Highlands as well as Lae and Madang.

We're on a path to 3 degrees by the end of the century, or sooner. At 3 degrees much of planetary life would end. McGuire argues that changes to the biosphere are now at the point of no return

RICHARD HIL
| Pearls & Irritations

NORTHERN NSW - A couple of months ago I set off with my partner to the northern hemisphere for a prolonged stint in Canada.

I’ll admit I was excited and relieved to be getting away from the rain-soaked Northern Rivers.

The region had been robbed of sunlight for months on end and the trauma of the floods earlier in the year was deeply ingrained, even though I was among the lucky few whose house was spared.

Jeffrey Sachs highlights the damaging US mindset that the world should revolve around it, which is undermining the need for regional cooperation to get on top of the huge problems facing the planet

KEITH JACKSON
| Drawn from John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations and other sources

NOOSA - In this speech made by Jeffrey Sachs ahead of late June’s NATO Summit in Madrid, he offers a view of a world in a great mess and which needs to renew diplomacy, negotiation, cooperation and collaboration to solve the immense problems humanity is facing.

Sachs, a professor of sustainable development and professor of health policy at Columbia University in USA, has served as an adviser to three United Nations secretaries-general and is an economist who advised on economic reforms in Russia and several Eastern European nations in the 1990s.

Australia's foreign minister Penny Wong - "We'll do more, we'll do it better, we'll listen"

NEWS DESK
| Radio New Zealand Pacific | Asia Pacific Report

AUCKLAND - Australia’s new foreign minister, Penny Wong, says the Labor government “will be a generous, respectful and reliable member of the Pacific family”.

In a message to the region, Wong set the tone for Australia’s renewed priorities for its island neighbours.

Cartoon - Fiona Katauskas

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad

PORT MORESBY - Despite visits past and planned to Honiara by Australian ministers and United States officials, Solomon Islands went ahead to sign a security deal with China.

Details remain sketchy, but a leaked draft says it will allow Chinese security forces to assist Solomons security forces when needed, including protecting Chinese businesses.

A Hela gang - law enforcement lacks integrity and capability (Michael Main)

MICHAEL KABUNI
|Academia Nomad

PORT MORESBY - In 2020 and 2021, Papua New Guinea faced serious security challenges on many fronts, including Covid-19, cyberattacks and tribal fights.

Many people in PNG do not see Covid as a security risk, as evidenced in the high level of vaccines hesitancy in the country.

Phil Fitzpatrick - like all rational people, looking forward with apprehension

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Like just about everyone else, the two major things that occupied my mind during 2021 were the Covid-19 pandemic and the rapidly developing catastrophes of climate change.

As the year comes to an end, both are spiralling out of control. At best we are helpless spectators with an undetermined fate.

Handover of  first Guardian Class patrol boat by Australia to PNG,  2019 (DFAT)

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Asia & The Pacific Policy Society

CANBERRA - Policymakers in the Pacific Island region face multifaceted security issues.

That fact is not lost on the region’s leaders, as demonstrated by the 2018 Boe Declaration on Regional Security, which expands the definition of security beyond the geostrategic concerns to human security.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - When I was a little kid I drove my parents to absolute distraction by regularly staying awake for 24 hours at a stretch and then sleeping for 12 hours straight.

They presumed that my circadian rhythm, a natural process that regulates the sleep–wake cycle, indicated I had a serious problem.

Greta Thunberg - telling the world a truth it doesn't want to hear. The longer we wait, the harder it will be

STEPHEN CHARTERIS

CAIRNS - It truly beggars belief that the government of a wealthy, modern nation state, that prides itself on the quality of its education system, cannot comprehend the significance of the most basic laws of nature.

The physics and chemistry of how increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide drive global heating and feedback loops is Science 101 for Grade 6.

Delegates pose at the end of COP26. They gave themselves protracted applause. It was not deserved (Pic - Yves Herman Reuters)

CHRIS OVERLAND

COPOUT26 - The ‘Glasgow climate pact’ has just been adopted with the 37-strong Alliance of Small Island States expressing “extreme disappointment” after a last-minute intervention by India to ‘phase down’ rather than ‘phase out’ coal use and a failure by rich nations to agree a mechanism for poor countries to receive 'compensation', a word rich countries say they 'cannot countenance’ – KJ

ADELAIDE - Phil Fitzpatrick, in recent comments on PNG Attitude, has pointed out the true implications of any serious attempt to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

This has been amplified by Paul Oates and Bernard Corden, while Kindin Ongugo has voiced legitimate concerns about the COP26 climate change conference further disadvantaging the world's poorest people.

Bonny Kaiyo - "The Green State Vision will make ecocide a serious criminal offence"

BONNY KAIYO

PORT MORESBY - The wealthy countries of the world have agreed on a 'Green State Vision’ at COP26, which ends in Glasgow today.

Indonesia signed up and now has the hard task of navigating what this means for itself and especially West Papua.

It is the restive province of West Papua that carries the bulk of Indonesia’s forest richness, which the country has now ratified and agreed to protect.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - One of the most perverse inventions of capitalism is planned obsolescence.

This is the idea that an article is manufactured to fall apart and cease to function properly after a certain amount of time.

Annoying for you and good for the manufacturer, who has ensured that users have to purchase a new article to continue to enjoy its convenience.

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – For me, the first big cop out of the COP26 climate change conference came with the revelation that Papua New Guinea prime minister James Marape had spent K5 million sending a 62-member delegation to Glasgow.

On Twitter I remarked that this was at the criminal end of reckless indulgence for a country that is literally broke and having to borrow billions just to sustain its basic operations, and which has a health system in tatters.

Cartoon - The Australian Way, by Hudson

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - It must be apparent by now to all world leaders that the Australian prime minister and his government are merely going through the motions of committing to the target of net zero emissions by 2050.

Their policy is a confection of aspirational statements backed by no credible analysis, no real plan and certainly no genuine commitment.

Sir David Attenborough and Governor Gary Juffa at the Glasgow summit - “Sir David is so sharp and ever more passionate about our natural environment,” says Juffa

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Scott Morrison’s announcement in Glasgow that “technology will have the answers” to saving the world from climate change has generated widespread disapproval from world leaders.

And his offer to increase Australia's climate funding by $100 million (K260 million) a year for the next five years to cover all Pacific Island and South-East Asian countries also left his audience cold.

DESIRĖ VÉRITÉ

CANBERRA – Papua New Guineans have woken up to Australia’s climate change propaganda.

They not only resent its blatant dishonesty, they’re angry Australia is trying to play them for fools.

And they are tuning out from sugar-coated Australian government climate change propaganda that aims to mislead ahead of next week’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.

Off to Glasgow at Australia's expense - handy front row of Juffa, Mori and Parkop

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – It seems the Australian federal government has finally agreed to set zero carbon emissions by 2050 as the nation’s climate goal.

This is the result of eight years of lethargy and two weeks of frenzy after which the Liberal Party bribed (with taxpayers’ money) its junior coalition partner, the National Party, to gain acceptance for a meaningless outcome.

Cartoon by Moir

ISHAAN THAROOR
| Washington Post | Extracts

WASHINGTON, DC - The major COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, is less than a week away.

The roughly 25,000 delegates — including top-level officials from more than 100 countries — expected to attend the United Nations-convened sessions and side events have their work cut out for them.

China's foreign minister Wang Yi chairs the first China-Pacific Island foreign ministers' meeting, held virtually last week

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Last week’s meeting of Pacific Island foreign ministers with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, included commitments by China to increase its activity in addressing Covid, poverty reduction and climate action.

Wang chaired the meeting which included Soroi Eoe of Papua New Guinea, senior ministers from Kiribati, Fiji, Tonga, Niue, Vanuatu, Micronesia, Solomon Islands and Henry Puna, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Bob Carr, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull at a function honouring former  Singapore foreign minister George Yeo

KATE LYONS
| The Guardian | Extracts

SYDNEY - Former Australian prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, and former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr, have accused the Morrison government of “cynical indifference” and “empty rhetoric” when it comes to climate action.

They said the commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 was the “bare minimum” that needed to be done.

Rupert Murdoch - "In the cold-blooded world of profit above everything, Murdoch has no intention of foregoing precious dollars"

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - In case you hadn’t noticed, the Murdoch press in Australia has embarked on an unexpected campaign urging action to combat climate change.

To most Australians this appeared to be outrageous hypocrisy given News Corp’s dreadful track record of climate change denial, disinformation and derision.

Australia's House of Representatives. Barry Jones was science minister from 1983-90

BARRY JONES
| John Menadue’s Pearls & Irritations
| Edited extracts

MELBOURNE - Only an active citizenry can prevent Australia sliding towards authoritarianism or populist democracy.

Democracy faces its greatest existential crisis since the 1930s. Hitler used democratic forms to come to power in Germany but rejected the democratic ethos.

António Guterres - "You have been raising the alarm, and your voice must be heard loud and clear"

ANTÓNIO GUTERRES
| United Nations Secretary‑General

NEW YORK - Your [Pacific Islands Forum] nations are confronting a dual crisis of climate change and the Covid‑19 pandemic.  Both threaten Pacific lives and livelihoods.

If we follow the current path, the consequences of climate disruption for the prosperity, well‑being and the very survival of Pacific communities will be severe.