By Hu'akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni*
People have battled and survived countless extreme natural disaster events, writes the prime minister. Photo: Screengrab / Facebook / Manoa Media
Opinion - "If we took the planet's temperature, it will tell us that the Earth has a fever. And it is sick."
I remember reading this statement from His Holiness, Pope Francis, back in September when my government had just hosted Pacific Leaders, donor partners and officials in Nukualofa for the 53rd Pacific Island Forum Leaders Meeting where they reaffirmed once more that the climate change crisis is an existential threat to our people, our homes and our livelihoods.
The United Nations (UN) Secretary General, António Guterres, was present, and said: "This is a crazy situation. Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity's making, a crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety. But if we save the Pacific, we also save ourselves."
Climate change impacts everyone around the world. But it is the Pacific communities that have been unfairly placed on the front line of this escalating crisis where they continue to experience the 'lived reality' of climate change, every day. While leaders gathered in Nukualofa, torrential rain and a 6.9 magnitude earthquake shook the place, as if it was a sign from above. Naturally our guests became quite alarmed, and I remember being asked by a reporter for a comment, to which I responded: "We put on a show with the rain and bit of flooding, and also shake you guys up a little bit by that earthquake, just to wake you up to the reality of what we have to face here in the Pacific, you know, natural disasters like that."
Hu'akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni Photo: UN/Cia Pak
Pacific people are resilient and humour is part of our resilience, it has gotten us through the toughest of times. Here in Tonga, our people have battled and survived countless extreme natural disaster events. The scars from the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai eruption and tsunami, are still very fresh. Tonga, like every Pacific country, has a story to tell.
With cyclones, earthquakes, flooding, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, storm surges, droughts and tsunamis, amongst other calamities, we don't need a thermometer to know the very confronting and frightening reality that the earth "has a fever, and is sick" indeed.
We welcome and acknowledge the calls from Pope Francis, as well as UN SG Antonio Guterres for urgent action on climate change.
The calls would resonate with all Pacific countries especially as the world gears up for the 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Every COP is an important opportunity for international collaboration on climate change.
We note that COP29 will have a particular focus on how to make finance available to developing countries for climate action. A key item on the agenda is what is referred to as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on Climate Finance.
We expect this to be a very contentious issue but this will not be surprising. Climate finance always has and will continue to be one of the thorniest issues at these negotiations.
For Tonga, and all Pacific countries, our argument is simple. Pacific communities are the least responsible for climate change. The countries responsible for this crisis must front up and take responsibility. COP29 as a 'finance COP' must deliver and the NCQG to be agreed to in Baku, will need to reflect our Pacific needs and priorities to simplify policy requirements to access the needed financial support to address our region's vulnerabilities.
The NCQG must ensure that SIDS are able to access sufficient, predictable, grants-based climate finance to address their climate change needs and priorities. Reflecting SIDS special circumstances, as recognised in the Paris Agreement Article 9.4 and 9.9, these climate finance mechanisms should be scalable, contextual, flexible, predictable, innovative and demand-driven. The NCQG is critical to the work to keep "1.5 alive".
Pacific countries have and we continue to work proactively with our development and donor partners to help ourselves. One of the ways we are doing this is through the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), the Pacific's way of responding to an overly complicated global financial system struggling to deliver equitable access to climate finance.
To help build the resilience of our vulnerable communities, the PRF aims to raise USD500 million by the end of 2025, and be ready to deliver for Pacific communities in 2026. Our long-term target is USD 1.5 billion, it may be modest in comparison to the real quantum for adaptation, but we cannot wait for the world to address the root causes of climate change.
As Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, I call on all world leaders to turn words into meaningful action at COP29. We must seize the moment in Baku to deliver, otherwise the Earth's fever, as His Holiness Pope aptly warned, could turn into pneumonia, or something worse.
*Hu'akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni is the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Tonga and the Chair of the Pacific Island Forum
