As delegations and observers stream into Palau for this year’s Pacific Islands Forum, they receive a stamp in their passport offering them entry into the country – but only if they offer something in return.
“Children of Palau, I take this pledge, as your guest, to preserve and protect your beautiful and unique island home,” the Palau Pledge states, part of a 2017 eco-initiative that the Micronesian nation followed up three years later with a ban on sunscreen containing reef-toxic chemicals.
Given that desire to safeguard future generations, it is hardly a surprise that climate change – always at the top of the agenda in the Pacific – is an even more pronounced topic of conversation in this year’s proceedings.
Palau president Surangel Whipps Jr is among those pushing for the region to become entirely powered by renewable energy, and his speech as the new forum chair at Monday’s opening ceremony emphasised the need to tackle global warming.
“A fraction of a degree is not a decimal point to us: it is a shoreline, a freshwater lens, a coral reef, a crop, and a home. The Pacific must continue to carry one clear message to the world: keep 1.5 degrees within reach.”
That target forms a critical part of the global Paris climate deal signed in 2016, with Pacific nations among those who advocated at the time for a suitably ambitious deal.
Yet as New Zealand’s election draws near, the Paris deal has been the subject of attacks from some members of the coalition Government. Act leader David Seymour has suggested we should renegotiate the accord or withdraw, while NZ First leader (and Foreign Minister) Winston Peters has pledged to “pull out of the failing Paris Agreement that is senselessly hamstringing our economy”.
It is a message that seems unlikely to resonate with the Pacific representatives holding meetings with Peters during his time in Palau, although the minister was unrepentant when asked by Newsroom about the significance of the Paris deal and the 1.5 degree target on Monday.
“Well, the problem is that whilst they’ve got that and that’s a serious focus for them, the other problem is that … four countries – namely China, Russia, the United States, and India – are responsible for 60 percent plus [of emissions].
“This is our problem we’ve got here – how can we possibly actually honour the Paris accord in any meaningful way while that is going on? It’s very difficult to say it here because it doesn’t suit the conversation, but we’ll have to face reality about what the sign-up of Paris was, particularly since New Zealand’s position was secured in the context that food supply would be exempt.”
Speaking to RNZ’s Morning Report the same day, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (who replaces Peters in Palau on Wednesday) indicated remaining in the Paris climate deal would be a non-negotiable for the National Party in any post-election negotiations, to the evident ire of the NZ First leader: “The only comment you can make about that is that it’s a demonstration that experience does matter in politics,” Peters retorted.
Shiva Gounden, the head of Greenpeace Australia’s Pacific programme, tells Newsroom it is crucial for Pacific leaders to keep up their levels of climate ambition at this year’s forum – including a commitment to the 1.5 degree target in the Paris deal.
“If you go beyond this, this means more extreme floods, more extreme weather patterns – but for Pacific people, if you make it literal, you lose your culture. You’ve got people who lose their homes because they have to move to another country, that means their children have to speak a different language … generations and generations of memories and wisdom and their spiritual footprint goes missing.
“I always say it’s not just a number threshold anymore – it’s a survival threshold for the Pacific.”
While it is the world’s largest emitters who have pushed the globe into a climate crisis, Gounden says that depth of connection to the Pacific ecosystem places a separate burden on New Zealand (among others in the region) to strive for their own reductions.
Peters and New Zealand have so far escaped any public criticism for the Government’s mixed messages on the Paris deal, but that doesn’t mean the country has got away entirely unscathed when it comes to its climate policy.
On the sidelines of the forum, the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change hosted an event to look back on the International Court of Justice’s 2025 advisory opinion that states had a legal obligation to prevent climate harm.
Describing the legal opinion as “a real tool that we can and must use in different ways”, Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege warned that partnership and policy efforts would still be important given the ability of countries to find a way out of litigation – with New Zealand a somewhat unwilling poster child after the Government changed the law last monthvto prevent findings of liability in tort for climate change damage.
“We’ve seen recently, even in one of our own good neighbours, New Zealand, that there can be efforts to amend laws that then would prevent climate litigation to move forward,” Stege said.
The coalition Government has argued the move was necessary to give businesses certainty, with Parliament rather than the courts best placed to devise climate policy – an argument that the Marshalls envoy politely rebutted.
“One of the ways that citizens have recourse to protection is through the courts. I’m not speaking about climate action, I’m speaking generally: if you curtail citizens’ ability to protect themselves, then I think that doesn’t serve your citizens.”
How well the Pacific’s inhabitants are served by this week’s proceedings remains to be seen, with Whipps and others eager to see leaders produce a suitably ambitious statement ahead of the annual COP climate summit in November.
But if New Zealand is not at the top of the list of emitters facing heat in the region, it is still being closely watched.
