Pacific neighbours need us to lead on climate as they fight multiple crises
The annual summit of Pacific Islands leaders rarely gets much media attention in the wider world, but Scott Morrison managed to give it a major boost on Friday. Not in a way he would have wanted.
Australia is the superpower of the Pacific Islands Forum. So it didnât go down well when Morrison was spotted eating his breakfast as Tuvaluâs Prime Minister addressed the opening session.
Scott Morrison managed to draw attention to last weekâs Pacific Island Forum.Credit:Dionne Gain
âAustralian PM eats during Pacific leadersâ summit, draws scornâ headlined the Samoa Observer. It was âan act widely viewed as disrespectfulâ during the virtual summit, according to the newspaper.
A Twitter chorus demanded to know whether Morrison would eat his morning toast during a summit with European or APEC leaders?
None of the other leaders complained, however. Perhaps because they are wearily accustomed to being overlooked and underappreciated.
The Pacific Islands countries own a vast swath of ocean â" they call themselves collectively the âBlue Continentâ.
Excluding Australia, their total land and sea territories and exclusive economic zones cover over 30 million square kilometres, an area bigger than Russia, China and the US combined. But their collective population of 10 million and underdeveloped economies has given them little heft in world affairs.
Just last month a group of Pacific islands leaders held an extended virtual meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. âHe kept working [at his desk] throughout, he was distracted the whole time,â says a seasoned Pacific observer. âThat got people upset.â
Perhaps the other leaders didnât complain about âtoastgateâ because Australia in general and Morrison in particular do actually make major contributions to the countries of the region.
âAustralia has been of great assistance with vaccines and that should be acknowledged,â says Dame Meg Taylor, a widely respected former Papua New Guinea diplomat and the former secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum.
Canberra so far has sent one million COVID vaccine doses to the people that Morrison calls âour Pacific familyâ and pledged another 14 million over the next year. Two crack medical emergency crews, AUSMAT teams, were dispatched to PNG and three to Fiji to help train and support local health workers.
Australia is providing vaccination support to PNG.Credit:Kate Geraghty
The federal government also committed record aid to the region of $1.44 billion in 2020-21. Itâs also doubled the number of Pacific workers in Australia under the Pacific Labour Scheme and the Seasonal Worker Program, bringing in an extra 12,500 workers.
Or perhaps the Pacific leaders didnât take offence because, compared with the triple crises now besetting them, Morrisonâs morning munchies were less than trivial.
âI know that some people think this is End Times,â says Dame Meg, as the Pacific Islands face what she calls the âtriple whammyâ. First is an economic crisis.
In a bid to protect their feeble health systems from the pandemic, almost all the nations of the region have sealed their borders. This shut off their single most lucrative industry â" tourism. Without incomes, families across the region have taken to subsistence farming to stay alive.
The second whammy is a health crisis. While the closed borders have protected most countries, serious COVID outbreaks are gripping several.
Fiji is the current centre of concern with about 3000 new cases and 16 new deaths in the previous 72 hours, according to Mondayâs World Health Organisation figures. Total deaths in Fiji now stand at 299 in a country with a population of fewer than one million.
French Polynesia also is suffering a surge of cases and a cumulative death toll of 157, a substantial hit to a country with a population smaller than Canberraâs. Australia has suffered 36 deaths per million in the pandemic to date. Fijiâs rate is 331 deaths per million. French Polynesiaâs is 555.
Dame Meg points out a troubling distrust of vaccines in the region. As elsewhere, this is fed by âsocialâ media, the well-worn superhighway for lies and conspiracies worldwide. And itâs aggravated by some religious leaders who preach that the only salvation is spiritual.
The third whammy is climate change. Tuvaluâs PM, Kausea Natano, told Fridayâs summit that âthere is no doubt that sea level rise continues to threaten the very core of our existence, of our statehood, our sovereignty, our people and our identity.â
Climate defeatism is setting in. Tuvalu recently opened an initiative with the UN to explore options for relocating the populations of entire Pacific states elsewhere. The âelsewhereâ is, of course, nowhere yet known.
Strikingly, the biggest outcome of Fridayâs summit was a declaration that presumes that prevention is now a lost cause. â Some of our Pacific Island neighbours, if sea level rises continue, will lose their territory,â NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pointed out to reporters.
So a joint declaration demanded that the existing oceanic boundaries of the Pacific Islands are kept intact even as the lands that defined them sink beneath rising tides. The declaration seeks recognition from the UN so that the principle can be enshrined in the law of the sea. Australia and NZ signed on too.
The South Pacific recently has enjoyed a fillip in its long struggle for attention. Chinaâs campaign for influence in the region has made it an arena for competition between the great powers.
A clear indicator of the Pacific Islandsâ new geopolitical relevance? Joe Biden sent a pre-recorded video message to the Friday summit. It was the first such gesture by any US president in the 50 years of the Pacific Islands Forum.
âThe US,â said Biden, âis committed to dramatically reducing our emissions by 2030â³. Fijian PM Frank Bainimarama thanked Biden âfor bringing America forcefully back to the right side of climate historyâ.
Australiaâs emissions targets, first pledged by Tony Abbott, were designed to match those of Barack Obamaâs America. Bidenâs new emissions targets are twice as ambitious as Obamaâs.
The regionâs focus now moves to the global climate conference in Glasgow in November. Dame Meg isnât despairing: âWeâll all get through this if we work together.â But can we? âAustraliaâs position on emissions and how it emerges in Glasgow will be very closely watched throughout the region.â
If Morrison canât manage to at least keep pace with American ambition at the Glasgow conference, it will be Australiaâs national standing that ends up toast.
Peter Hartcher is international editor
Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
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