Mr President,

Excellencies,

1. Bula vinaka and thank you very much for the opportunity to deliver this statement as the Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum.

2. As I speak, our Pacific Island negotiators and delegations are enduring a long and arduous journey to Glasgow to ensure our voice is heard loud and clear at COP26 despite challenges faced with flight connections, transit hubs, exorbitant accommodation rates in Glasgow and quarantine costs.  Our Leaders are not there just to make the numbers, but our mission is to raise the urgency for climate action now and meaningfully engage to influence a legacy COP26 outcome.

3. Excellencies, climate change is the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of many of our Blue Pacific low-lying atoll nations and is our daily lived reality.  At 1.2 degrees of global warming, our oceans are heating up resulting in coral bleaching, our seas are rising and climate induced disasters are more frequent and severe.  Our sovereignty and very survival are at stake.

4. That’s why COP26 is very important. We know this COP is the final opportunity to keep the 1.5 degrees threshold within reach and avoid a tipping point of no return.  World leaders, like our Pacific Islands Forum Leaders, must affirm the urgent threat of climate change and act with urgency to implement the Paris Agreement.

5. Our Leaders have urged all Parties to the Paris Agreement to ensure that COP26 concludes negotiation on the Paris Rulebook, delivers an outcome that promotes stronger transparency and pursues efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and mobilises scaled-up climate finance for adaptation from all sources.

6. We reiterate our call in the Kainaki Lua Declaration for the international community to continue efforts towards meeting their climate finance commitment of US$100 billion dollars per year from a variety of sources and accelerate support for the work of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts.  COP 26 must also advance the work on Oceans in the UNFCCC, recognising its centrality to our Blue Pacific Continent.

7. Excellencies, as one Blue Pacific Continent, we are – and will continue – to take decisive action.  To secure the future of our Blue Pacific, the Leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum are pursuing regional solutions recognising that each of our nation’s futures, as well as the actions we choose to take, are interconnected.

8. We are defining the collective future we want for our children through the development of our 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific.  This collective vision will put climate change at the centre of our development plans and together, we will take ownership of and collectively respond to pressing challenges ahead.

9. The 2019 Kainaki Lua Declaration from Pacific Islands Forum Leaders continues as our clarion call for urgent climate action.

10.  Forum Leaders have upped the ante with their recent issue of the Declaration on Preserving Maritime Zones in the face of Climate Change-related Sea-level rise – a strong and decisive step to secure our Blue Pacific home now and into perpetuity.

11. Forum Leaders have also established the Pacific Resilience Facility – a Pacific designed and led fund to build the resilience of our communities in the face of climate change and disasters.

12. But what we need is all world leaders to act. The Paris Agreement is not just a political tool. All parties must recommit to their obligation and ensure they ramp up ambition to keep within reach the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

13. In closing, we cannot understate the urgency of what we must achieve at COP26. It must deliver the required ambition that will safeguard the future of our Blue Pacific.

14. For us in the Pacific climate change is not a debate, it’s a matter of survival. But we will not relent. We will do all that’s possible to fight for our Blue Pacific, and this one planet’s future.

15. COP26 must be a COP of action. To all world leaders, now is the time.

• Act for our children and grandchildren
• Act for our islands
• Act for our ocean
• Act for our Blue Pacific, and
• Our for our Blue Planet that we all share and call home.

I thank you.