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Pacific Island Nations Call Out

Australia and New Zealand’s neighbours in the Pacific: the Cook Islands, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau and Tuvalu are asking for our solidarity as they face the consequences of human-induced climate change. The Torres Strait Islands at the northern tip of Queensland face similar threats.

Low lying islands acknowledge that they need to address population and unemployment issues, better manage their environmental resources, improve food security and protect their fish resources from poaching. What they want us to realise is that greenhouse gas emissions from polluting countries like Australia and New Zealand are exacerbating these problems and creating new ones.

They are experiencing increasingly severe storm surges and higher king tides resulting in coastal erosion and receding shorelines. Longer droughts and more frequent inundation of salt water is damaging soil and leading to the death of important food sources such as bread fruit, taro and coconut. Fresh water supplies are also threatened. As with Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, warmer ocean surface temperatures threaten to bleach coral reefs and thus damage coastal fishing supplies. As the climate changes some islands will see an increase in diseases like dengue fever and malaria.

Green house gas emissions need to be drastically cut back and the islands need more substantial assistance than is already being provided to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

At the Pacific Island Forum in Cairns in August 2009 the Cook Islands, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau and Tuvalu restated their adoption of the position of the global Association of Small Islands States that asks developed nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2020 and 85 percent by 2050.

About Pacific Calling Partnership

The Pacific Calling Partnership began in May 2006 in response to a series of calls that had come from the peoples in low-lying Pacific Islands. The PCP brings together a number of significant Non Government Organisations (NGOs), school groups, community organisations, and individuals who all recognize Australia’s ecological debt to Kiribati, Tuvalu, parts of the Torres Strait and other low-lying Pacific Island neighbours. These are joined in partnership with individuals and organisations living in the Pacific and migrant groups in Australia. New members are always welcome.

Together we strive, in all our endeavours, to listen to and be accountable to voices from the Pacific and Torres Strait and to raise awareness about the impacts on them of high greenhouse gas emissions from industrialised countries. The PCP meets regularly in order to co-ordinate, energise, and review the progress that the campaign is making. Several partners are members of the Climate Action Network of Australia (CANA) and are active participants in CANA processes.

The PCP aims to build a consensus that drives support for Australia, in partnership with our neighbours, to undertake an audit of the civil, cultural, economic and environmental resilience of all countries within the Pacific region. In this way we can work towards building a positive, communitarian and sustainable response based on Human Rights to the increased water, food, fuel and land stresses that are predicted under present circumstances and future climate change scenarios.

Approach

The PCP raises awareness in Australia and the Pacific of a sense of connection by celebrating and making known the human stories that bind us.

The PCP seeks to encourage leadership and advocacy skills around climate change issues among interested Pacific and Torres Strait Islanders.

The PCP supports the development of a regional approach to climate-related migration and labour mobility that prioritises the Pacific and increases the choices of Pacific Islanders.

The PCP supports the statement by the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) that,
‘The greatest form of mitigation and assistance to adaptation Australia could provide to the Pacific is to instigate significant cuts in our greenhouse gas emission and move away from a fossil fuel-based economy.’

The PCP supports the call of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) in its campaign to ensure that

AOSIS Input into the Assembly Document, “Shared Vision” presented at climate change negotiations to the UNFCCC in Copenhagen 2009

2009 Pacific Calling Partnership Strategic Plan

Twelve people from several different organisations that make up the Partnership came together on 30 January and decided on the major directions for the the Partnership for 2009. The meeting that decided that during 2009 our main focus will be to link the local with the global as decisions made at Copenhagen are going to be crucial to the future of the Pacific Islands.

Click here to read the Strategic Plan

Donations

Donate to the Edmund Rice Centre so that we can continue our work coordinating the Pacific Calling Partnership. All donations are tax deductible. Visit the 'Donate' page on the ERC site for more details.