PACIFIC LEADERS CALL FOR PROTECTION OF LOW-LYING COASTAL DEVELOPING STATES

Prime Minister and Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIFs) Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama presented a united appeal and call from the Leaders of the Blue Pacific to save our low-lying coastal developing states, and our entire world, from climate change-related sea-level rise.

At the Ocean Mana-One Blue event, Prime Minister Bainimarama said that our planet is in grave danger and we must accelerate all efforts to restore our planet’s health as the wrath of climate change intensifies.

“The alarm bells have been sounded loudly and this time more deafening than ever. This is the new normal right throughout our globe, from sea-level rise, flash flooding, cyclones, and storm surges, to droughts and bush fires. If we continue with our current actions or inaction, we will send our Blue Planet into the abyss.”

Prime Minister Bainimarama also spoke at length about the 2021 Leaders’ Declaration.

“These unprecedented times call for unprecedented solutions, and as large oceanic sovereign states of the Blue Pacific, we look no further than to our endowment, our lifeblood-our ocean- for these innovative solutions.

“We have just witnessed one such unprecedented solution – the Leaders’ Declaration on Preserving Maritime Zones in the face of Climate Change-related Sea-level rise.

“The Declaration is not just another sheet of paper. Every word, as pronounced by our Leaders tonight, carries the voices of our people, our children, our plight and our fight to save our people and our home from this crisis.

​“I take this opportunity to extend to all of you, an invitation on behalf of Pacific Islands Forum Leaders and all citizens of the Blue Pacific Continent: Join Us – under the banner of the Declaration on Preserving Maritime Zones in the face of Climate Change-related Sea-level rise – to lead the work to protect the future of our peoples. Let us build stronger partnerships to better take this work forward.”

The Pacific Ocean Commissioner who is the Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Forum, Mr Henry Puna in his opening address said the event is one for the history books because together leaders formally launched the Declaration on Preservation of Maritime Zones in the face of sea level rise.

“It is, as you all know, a trail-blazing Declaration – for our region and for the world – this document cements, yet again, the Pacific’s global leadership in Ocean Governance,” he said.

He further stated that the Climate-Ocean nexus and the health of the Ocean is critical to life on the Blue Planet and it is critical to not only as a Pacific people but all humankind, the communities and societies existence in the next century; and, the Pacific people’s very livelihoods.

“There is no time better than the present to act and address the declining health trends of our Ocean. The science has spoken – we are all glaringly aware of the potential impacts on the ocean, if we do not act on climate change now – not tomorrow, not in 2030 - but right now!,” declared Secretary-General Puna.

The Secretary General of the Commonwealth, The Rt Hon. Patricia Scotland in her remarks echoed the Langkawi Declaration saying in 1989, the Commonwealth leaders came together in Langkawi, Malaysia to sign the Langkawi Declaration. In the Declaration, three years before the first Conference of Parties (COP), scientists and leaders of the Commonwealth led by the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean small states said that if climate change was not addressed now, the Commonwealth small states would face an existential threat.

“And I would invite all of us to re-read that Declaration because if you are like me, it will make you weep, because everything everything that has happened in the last thirty years is outlined in that Declaration. So when the Commonwealth came together in November in Malta in 2015, and said we needed 1.5 to stay alive, we didn’t do it because it was our hope and aspiration, we did it because the empirical data demonstrated beyond peradventure that if we did not secure 1.5, many of our islands would not stay alive,” she said.

The Pacific Political Ocean Champion and Attorney General Hon. Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum in his remarks highlighted the Ocean Pathway stating after three COPS,  and long days and nights of negotiations, the Ocean Pathway is charting its course from aspiration to action. He added that the Pacific’s next big leap begins by spelling out a clear, bold and blue vision of where the Ocean Pathway must lead. As some of the world’s largest ocean states and as nations on the front-line of climate change, the Pacific hopes that its vision of a sustainable regional Blue economy can become that of the world’s.

“One glimpse of the colour of life in our island’s maritime eco-systems including our reefs is all it takes to know exactly why they’re worth fighting for. We’re marrying traditional knowledge with emerging science and practice to preserve this eco-systems so that our children and grand-children can experience them for themselves,” he said.

Also in attendance at the event was the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth and the Organisation of Africa, Caribbean and Pacific States, the UNSG’s Special Envoy on Ocean and General-Secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches.