ERC -- Pacific Calling Partnership -- Discussion Papers

Kiribati - The Human face of Climate Change

by Josie Cooks
...The people of Kiribati are facing the realistic possibility of losing their homes, their culture and their identity. Phil Glendenning, director of the Edmund Rice Centre, a member of the PCP states “the Copenhagen Summit and the debate over climate change cannot be limited to simplistic arguments only. It must include the future of all people – especially those most at risk. The world needs to listen to them and it needs to listen to them now. The very future of Kiribati is at stake.”....
click here to read more (PDF, 66kb)

The Pacific Calling Partnership and International Climate Change Advocacy

This paper outlines the work of the Pacific Calling Partnership (PCP). It seeks to show how the work of the PCP connects to the broader framework of international civil society advocacy in relation to climate change.

Click here to read the paper (Doc, 47kb)

Engaging our Pacific Neighbours on Climate Change – Australia’s Approach

The policy document can be accessed at the following web link http://www.climatechange.gov.au/international

Read it and send them a comment!

In the Pacific, they're not waving, they're drowning

Features Maria Tiimon from Kiribati and Sulu Uota from Tuvalu both key people in the Pacific Calling Partnership which also gets a mention. http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/08/05/special-report-in-the-pacific-theyre-not-waving-theyre-drowning/

We aren’t refugees

For people on Kiribati and Tuvalu facing increasing climate pressures, the description ‘refugee’ has too many negative connotations, writers Jane McAdam and Maryanne Loughry - Inside story June 30, 2009 and the Canberra Times http://inside.org.au//tag/climate-change/

A fair-weather friend? Australia’s relationship with a climate-changed Pacific

A Report by Louise Collett

The Australia Institute conducts research on a broad range of economic, social and environmental issues in order to inform public debate and bring greater accountability to the democratic process.

The Institute is funded by memberships, donations from philanthropic trusts and individuals, and commissioned research. With no formal political or commercial ties, the Institute is in a position to maintain its independence while advancing a vision for a fair and progressive Australia.

Click here to read the report. (Doc, 30.5kb) You can also read the report at www.tai.org.au

OXFAM www.oxfam.org.au has also just released a Briefing Paper The Future is Here: Climate Change in the Pacific which finds that Pacific Islanders are already feeling the effects of climate change and need greater support now

Just Comment Vol 12 No 1 - Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

The Edmund Rice Centre's latest Just Comment offers a critique of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme as it is framed in June 2009

Just Comment Vol 12 No 1 Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
Updated: 06/12/2009

Urgent: a fair and effective carbon pollution reduction scheme

Good law must be based on good principles that are widely and clearly understood.

Australia must act now because the world must act now. Global agreement on meaningful targets is absolutely crucial and that also means participation in global cap and trade schemes. To participate in the negotiations and the global mechanisms, Australia must have its own cap and trade scheme.

• Download document here: .pdf 83KB (2 pages)
• Download a fully referenced background version of this publication here: .pdf 116KB (5 pages)

Putting a Price Cap on Australia’s Greenhouse Integrity

This article outlines the need for the CPRS to take a smarter approach to International Offset Credits.

Oliver Sartor works for the Center for Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM) at the University of New South Wales as a Researcher. CEEM is a multidisciplinary research center bringing together expertise from the Faculties of Economics, Engineering and Social Sciences. It's work focuses mainly on the economics, innovation and governance issues surrounding energy and environmental markets. (Doc, 29kb)

Forum's hard line brings ripple effect to Pacific Nations

Reflections from NZ journalist Dev Nadkarni on the unintended effects of suspending Fiji from the Pacific Island Forum - NZ Herald May 8 2009

Click here to read the article (PDF, 18.8kb)

Final Warning: Greenpeace Call to Arms

Greenpeace Australia Pacific has released a report on the IPCC's updated climate science that aims to recast the urgency and seriousness of the problem. The report details how the fourth IPCC report's data are significantly out of date, and required actions are more urgent than we thought. The report states: 'We know democratic societies have responded successfully to dire and immediate threats, as was demonstrated in World War II. This is a last call for an effective response to global warming'. This ‘call to arms’ includes input from some of the country’s leading scientists, plus several commentators and politicians.

You can download it from http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/resources/reports/climate-change/finalwarning240309

Two Climate Change and Displacement Scenarios – The Choice is Ours

March 2009

A Presentation to The Turning Point –2009 Annual Meeting of the Climate Action Network Australia (CANA) by Scott Leckie, Director, Displacement Solutions.

For further papers from Displacement Solutions go to www.displacementsolutions.org, then go to DS at Work.

Climate Emergency in the Pacific (from Crikey.com)

Journalist and researcher in the Pacific Islands Nic Maclellan writes:

At a time when Queenslanders are inundated with massive flooding, spare a thought for our island neighbours, who are also suffering from these extreme weather events.

Over the last three months, a number of Pacific island countries have seen severe flooding, following a combination of tropical rain depressions, king tides and storm surges.

• Over 38,000 people were affected by flooding in Papua New Guinea in early December 2008, with the PNG government allocating 50 million kina in relief and recovery funds. Following massive sea swells, over 2,000 houses were destroyed or damaged in provinces along the northern New Guinea coast (including West Sepik, East Sepik, Madang and Morobe provinces) and the Islands region (New Ireland, Manus, and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville).
• In December, a state of emergency was declared in both the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, as widespread flooding displaced hundreds of people. A combination of 3-metre waves and heavy storms flooded Majuro and Ebeye, the main population centres in the Marshall Islands, which are only a few metres above sea level.
• For two weeks in January, flooding across Fiji caused 11 deaths and devastated the economy. Fiji’s military-run interim administration declared a state of emergency and imposed curfews to stop looting. Interim Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama said the flooding is the worst ever in Fiji’s history, with direct effects on more than 116,328 people in the Western Division and 30,667 people in the Central Division.
• In February 2009, Solomon Islands declared a national disaster after eight people died as flooding and torrential rain damaged homes and bridges in 12 communities on the main island of Guadalcanal. Flooding on Guadalcanal and Savo Island led to the evacuation of more villagers to the capital Honiara.

Many climatologists are warning that the floods and fires in Australia are a sign of things to come. Australians will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to recover from the damage and trauma in Victoria and Queensland. But how will our poorer island neighbours pay the bill?

Fiji’s interim government has started tallying the damage from the Fiji floods across all sectors of the economy. As Islands Business magazine noted: "the country’s tourism industry is set to take a battering, with hundreds of tourists caught in the rains likely to be deterred from revisiting the country again in the summer wet season."

Fiji’s Director of Meteorology Rajendra Prasad has stated: "The January 2009 flood was the worst natural disaster to economically affect Fiji since the [El Nino] drought in 1998 when the loss exceeded F$160 million."

Australia has contributed $3 million in humanitarian aid to assist people affected by the Fiji floods. But our neighbour’s already battered economy faces massive disruption, with over F$16 million damage to roads and bridges, losses for the sugar cane crop estimated at 68,960 tons, over F$10 million damage to the water reticulation system and millions more for damage to schools and hospitals, electricity and telecommunications infrastructure.

Around the islands region, people are worried that these extreme weather events will increase in frequency and intensity as global warming contributes to long-term climactic change. Just as Black Saturday 7 February brought Victoria’s highest ever recorded temperature, parts of Fiji experienced their wettest January in over a century, with some sites receiving three to four times their normal rainfall for the month. Seven daily rainfall records were broken in January.

At the 1997 Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Rarotonga, John Howard blocked the regional consensus that the countries of Oceania should carry a united voice to the UNFCC meeting in Kyoto. It took a decade for Australia to sign on to the Kyoto protocol. As Australia prepares to host the Forum leaders meeting in Cairns in the first week of August, will we see a different attitude from the Labor government?

Australia’s current policy on greenhouse gas targets does not bode well for our island neighbours, who will be pressing the Rudd government for action in the lead up to the December 2009 Copenhagen climate negotiations.

Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au, submit them anonymously here or SMS tips and photos to 0427 TIP OFF.

Redfern activist calls for climate justice

The Rudd Government’s failure to adopt adequate greenhouse gas emission targets may prove devastating for Pacific Islanders, according to Aboriginal and Islander activist Patricia Corowa reports Laura Bannister in the South Sydney Herald of February 2009.

“Australia reaps the economic benefits of being the world’s highest per capita polluter, while sovereign island nations like the economically disadvantaged Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tonga and Samoa watch rising seas sweep through their houses,” she says.

As a third-generation South Sea Islander or “saltwater Murroona woman,” Ms Corowa has always had a “strong sense and knowledge of country”.

The retired Sydney airport customs officer, and grandmother of one, says she has been an Aboriginal and Islander activist since age 10, when remote Indigenous communities were persecuted by white settlers. During the 1970s Ms Corowa founded several pivotal welfare organisations including the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service.

Now living in Redfern, she is a strong advocate of climate justice for resource-poor Oceania nations and believes the Australian Government, as the dominant regional power, is bound by a duty of care for them. “I am not persuaded that there has been serious or even basic discussion about the rights of small Pacific Island nations under threat,” she says. “The situation [of many Islanders] is alarming.”

Tuvalu is one such struggling island nation. Made up of reef islands and atolls, the low-lying land is a mere five metres above sea level at its highest point and has few natural resources. With less than 100 tourists visiting annually, Tuvalu’s weak economy is heavily dependent upon foreign aid.

Yet industrialised countries refuse to adequately curb their consumption of dwindling resources or restrain greenhouse gas production, factors that could eventually result in the nation’s complete submersion, Ms Corowa argues.

Ms Corowa says the displacement of Pacific Islanders contravenes Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrines the right of every person to a home. “I contend that unrestrained greenhouse gas production by Australia and other economically developed countries for their own advantage constitutes arbitrary interference,” Ms Corowa says.

“When Australians sing ‘our home is girt by sea’ do they really understand that sea includes three great oceans … with Indigenous Islander societies?”

Source: South Sydney Herald February 2009 www.southsydneyherald.com.au

Environment: Fears and Hopes of the Islands

Click here to read the article "Environment: Fears and Hopes of the Islands" by Samisoni Pareti (PDF, 21kb)

Pacific Labour Mobility Seasonal Guest Worker Schemes

This discussion paper assesses the experience learnt from New Zealand's Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme to help evaluate Australia's proposed Pacific Islander Seasonal Worker pilot scheme.

The authors:
James (Tsehay) Adegeh was an intern researcher at the Edmund Rice Centre working on the preparation of this paper. He is currently the Secretary of the Horn of Africa Relief and Development Association.
John Sweeney is the Co-ordinator of Research at the Edmund Rice Centre as well as the Leader of the Edmund Rice Business Ethics Initiative.

Click here to read the discussion paper (PDF, 80kb)

Extracts from: Article in Science Mode on Feb 5th, 2009 - Economies will suffer as climate change imperils fisheries

Economies will suffer most as climate change imperils fisheries

Penang, Malaysia —"With climate change threatening to destroy coral reefs, push salt water into freshwater habitats and produce more coastal storms, millions of struggling people in fishery-dependent nations of Africa, Asia and South America could face unprecedented hardship, according to a new study published today in the February issue of the peer-reviewed journal Fish and Fisheries. The study, by a team of scientists at the WorldFish Center, the University of East Anglia, Simon Fraser University, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, the University of Bremen, and the Mekong River Commission, is the first to identify individual nations that are “highly vulnerable” to the impact of climate change on fisheries. The authors of the report examined 132 national economies to determine which are the most vulnerable, based on environmental, fisheries, dietary and economic factors. Countries that need the most attention, they said, are not necessarily the places that will experience the greatest environmental impacts on their fisheries. Rather, they are countries where fish play a large role in diet, income and trade yet there is a lack of capacity to adapt to problems caused by climate change—such as loss of coral reef habitats to the bleaching effects of warmer waters and lakes parched by an increase in heat and a decrease in precipitation. For example, fish accounts for 27 percent or more of daily protein intake in vulnerable countries—compared to 13 percent in non-vulnerable nations—and there are scant resources for alternative sources of protein.... ...“The problems driven by climate change are bad enough by themselves; what will make them much worse are the economic and institutional weaknesses of the vulnerable countries identified in this study and their fishing communities,” said Steve Hall, director general of WorldFish. “Fisheries are already under tremendous pressure from overfishing, habitat loss, pollution and a range of other factors. Climate adaptation measures must go hand in hand with efforts to confront other threats if these countries are to succeed in building sustainable livelihoods for fish-dependent people.”... ...One of the shortcomings of this study, he said, is that there were not enough data on such variables as the social and economic impacts of fisheries at the country level. The scarcity of data was particularly evident for subsistence fishing and small island states, particularly in the Pacific Ocean. In fact, researchers were unable to calculate all the vulnerability components for 60 nations, so these could not be included among the study’s list of potentially vulnerable countries. Nevertheless, many of these excluded nations - like Kiribati, Myanmar, Somalia, and the Solomon Islands—most likely have a mix of economic, social and environmental conditions that make them highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change on their fisheries."

Protecting coral reefs from climate change impacts

Dr Chris McGrath's main research interests is protecting coral reefs from climate change impacts. rather than expend greenhouse gases travelling from Brisbane he sent a summary of a paper he has written that examined the scientific evidence of the threat of climate change on coral reefs in the Pacific and the policy targets necessary to avoid severe impacts. Healthy coral reefs are vital for maintaining food supplies and human rights in the Pacific. Climate stabilisation targets of 450-550 ppm carbon dioxide equivalents, allowing a rise of 2-3 degrees Celsius in mean global temperatures, are too high. If we wish to protect coral reefs in the Pacific we should aim to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gases at 350 ppm carbon dioxide equivalents, allowing a rise of 1 degree Celsius in mean global temperatures.
For more details, see: http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/cel_op_mcgrath.pdf

To read the paper click here (PDF, 146kb)

Just Comment

The Edmund Rice Centre has also published two articles as part of its Just Comment series based on the Pacific Calling Partnership's research. These are 'Debunking Myths about Climate Change' and 'Climate Changing Our Neighbours Future'.

Global Warming: a natural disaster open to remedy

This series of recent articles by Paul W. Newbury looks at various aspects of global warming. The articles provide an understanding about greenhouse gases, the energy debate and issues around global equity.Click here to access these articles.

Connecting the Pacific

On Behalf Of Gideon Polya

“Connecting the Pacific” that connects Pacific Islander communities at Home and around the World has reported the Melbourne Climate Emergency Rally with photos (see: http://www.eventpolynesia.com/index.htm and http://www.eventpolynesia.com/newsroom/common/CO2_page_newsroom08044.htm ) as well as my summary critique of the disgraceful pro-coal Rudd Green Paper entitled “AUSTRALIA: Oz Green Paper Dooms Pacific Islands” (scroll down at: http://www.eventpolynesia.com/newsroom/common/CO2_page_newsroom08044.htm ) with a picture of the Rally and of David Spratt being interviewed. These nice Pacific people (its called the Pacific Way) welcome Pacific-related stories with photographs.