In 2021, PCP Pacific Outreach Officer Maria Tiimon Chi-Fang prepared a submission to the House of Representative Environment and Energy Committee on Climate Change expressing support for Independent MP Hon. Zali Steggall’s Climate Change Bills. The PCP endorsed these Bills’ long-term commitment to emissions reduction through building a durable legal and policy framework for national climate action.

Download the submission

November 2020

Introduction

The Australian government, along with the governments of all members of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), has committed to run domestic consultations into the PIF’s 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.

As the PIF’s 2050 vision says:

• In 2050, the Blue Pacific Continent is a region of peace; harmony; security, social inclusion; and increased prosperity so that all Pacific people are leading free, healthy and productive lives.
  
• Our Blue Pacific identity reinforces the potential of our shared stewardship of the Pacific Ocean and reaffirms the connections of Pacific peoples with their natural resources, environment, cultures and livelihoods.
• We understand that this vision can only be achieved through regional collective action.

In this spirit, Peacifica and the Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education have prepared a joint submission to the inquiry. Central to our submission is the fact that the climate crisis is the region’s single greatest threat, and that Australia’s intransigence on climate action in poses a significant threat to the realisation of the 2050 vision.

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By Dr Usha Harris, media and communication academic at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

In July this year I had the opportunity to visit Kiribati for the first time as part of an Australian delegation organised by Pacific Calling Partnership and hosted by KiriCAN (Kiribati Climate Action Network). I went to Kiribati with a misperception that there was little hope for its people who faced a bleak future due to sea level rise. Instead, I returned inspired by a resilient people who refuse to sit and wait for the world to save them from the impacts of climate change. They are focused on finding sustainable solutions in turning the resources of the ocean and the thin sliver of land on which they live to productive use.

Download Dr Harris' report