Pawa in Palau – Greenpeace Australia Pacific

This week our powerful Pacific team is in Palau for the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting. This is a major moment in our campaigns for Pacific climate justice and to stop deep sea mining. So what’s it all about, what can we expect over the coming days, and why is this year’s meeting in particular so important? Read on to find out!

_{*Pawa is Melanesian word meaning collective power.}

Meet Moemoana Schwenke, our Pacific Climate Campaigner

“When you love something deeply, you do everything you can to protect it.”

What is the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)?

The Pacific Islands Forum, or ‘PIF’, is our region’s most important political organisation. It is where countries of the Pacific — including Australia and New Zealand — come together to collaborate on shared challenges and to set collective goals.

The PIF Leaders Meeting is an annual weeklong event that includes a dedicated meeting of the Pacific’s small island developing states (PSIDS), many special side events organised by Pacific civil society, the leaders’ meeting itself, and more. At the end of the week, leaders issue a Forum Communiqué, capturing what they have agreed on, their shared priorities and the actions they will take together.

This year’s meeting is being held in the beautiful northern Pacific nation of Palau, the same place our Pacific team gathered back in January to plan for the year.

What’s at stake this year?

Climate change has dominated the PIF for decades. Pacific leaders have been crystal clear it is their number one priority, and the annual gathering is the moment they can exert maximum pressure on Australia over its fossil fuel record.

The voyage to COP31

This year’s meeting comes less than three months before COP31, where Australia will take on the role of President of Negotiations — a role it has committed to undertaking in partnership with the Pacific — and less than a month before the ‘Pacific Pre-COP’, to be held in Fiji and Tuvalu.

Following a fraught round of mid-year negotiations in Bonn, PIF leaders will need to set out a clear vision and priorities for COP31. These include accelerating a just global transition away from fossil fuels, defending science as the foundation of international climate cooperation, and increasing the availability and accessibility of finance for renewable energy and climate adaptation.

Accountability for Australian fossil fuel exports

Since the last PIF Leaders Meeting, Australia has signed the Belém Declaration on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. The declaration reaffirmed the legally binding commitment to help limit global warming to 1.5°C and recognised that this is incompatible with new fossil fuel production. Yet, Australia has continued to approve new coal and gas projects, including at least five since the last PIF Leaders Meeting.

What is Greenpeace doing?

We’re going big this year, taking six members of our team to Palau to support Pacific leaders to hold the line, hold Australia accountable, and show the world what’s at stake. We’ll lobby leaders, hold press conferences, share our messages with the world, and support our incredible local partners in Palau.

How can you get involved?

PIF is the first in a drumbeat of major moments where we’ll be carrying the voices of the Pacific to the world. Come October we’ll be voyaging to Fiji on our ship Oceania for the Pacific Pre-COP, and in November we’ll be off to Antalya for the world’s climate negotiations (COP31).

Learn more about the Pacific way to a fossil fuel free future by checking out our report and exhibition.

Follow our journey, and check back here for more ways to join the movement for climate justice. Together we have the pawa!