Honourable Ministers,
Excellencies,
Senior Officials,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It’s a pleasure to welcome you all here this evening for the announcement of Fiji’s COP29 Delegation and I would like to thank the British High Commissioner, His Excellency Dr. Brian Jones for hosting this event.
In less than three weeks’, many of members of the Fiji Delegation will be 15,000 kilometres away from home in Baku, Azerbaijan preparing for what will most certainly be a challenging two weeks of negotiations.
With this in mind, this evening is an important send off for the Ministers, senior officials, and support teams that will represent our nation on the world stage. As Fiji’s head of delegation, I have been impressed by the commitment and diligence with which our negotiators have prepared for COP29 and I thank the Permanent Secretary for Environment and Climate Change, Dr. Sivendra Michael for his leadership and management of the preparation process. Last week, Cabinet approved the proposed approach, positions, and objectives that will guide our delegates through a COP that by all estimations will be an immense challenge to traverse.
Our goal is to emerge from the negotiations with our priorities intact, our hope for the future reinforced, and our ability to tackle the challenges we face here in Fiji enhanced.
But to achieve this goal, we face an uphill battle. Parties have spent the best part of two years negotiating a framework for agreeing a new collective goal for the amount of climate finance that needs to be deployed annually to ensure developing countries – their communities, environments, and economies – can manage the implications of the climate crisis amidst the soaring cost of living and growing geopolitical tensions. But despite these efforts there remains major divergence between parties and groups on the approach, scope, scale, and inclusions of this collective goal.
The Pacific Island countries have set out a firm vision for the NCQG. The quantum must be evidence-based, consider both current and projected needs, and recognise the scale and urgency of the efforts required to both limit and address the impacts of climate change.
We are clear that the NCQG will be unbalanced if it does not account for the financing required for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage financing needs within the scope of quantum-setting method and approach.
A further crucial dimension for small island states is the battle to ensure our special circumstances are not only recognised but directly addressed and provided for within this global goal. Securing a minimum allocation floor for SIDS and LDCs is not a propositional ask, it is a pre-requisite that underpins the ability to deliver finance urgently for the most vulnerable.
I have said before – but will continue to repeat – the level of finance that Fiji and Pacific need should be more than 10 times what is available today – at its floor – at its minimum.
– We have over 200 sea walls to build ;
– over 40 villages requiring relocation;
– over 100000 hectares of farm lands that need to be protected from salt water intrusion
– 100’s of village-health-centres -schools that are outside our national grid that need off-grid renewable energy solutions;
– some 80,000 Fijian children still unable to do their school homework or just read without access to electricity and who urgently need to be connected to sustainable energy;
– we have long term residual damage to infrastructure ranging from island airports to jetties, schools and health centres in urgent need of repair and reconstruction in some cases as a result of successive extreme weather events.
– we need to build resilience across our health centres and medical facilities; we have to deliver food and water security that can withstand the both current and future climate change impacts.
And all this is just part of what is required to achieve long-term climate security in Fiji. Despite this – ensuring our circumstances are understood and recognised is not an easy task.
While there are a range of parties and groups that seek to erode the basis of our special circumstances, there are many that fully support our needs. However, the situation is complicated by the intensifying debate on the contributor base. The traditional demarcations between who provides and who receives is fiercely contested. Careful navigation of these issues continues to be required at the diplomatic level, but my firm view is that wherever politics prevent or distort progress, we must ensure we are oriented by the science and always be the first to call for pragmatism and appropriate comprise.
It is important for us to be clear that the ambition set through the NCQG is a direct proxy for the ambition to keep global average temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius. That the ambition set through the NCQG is a proxy for understanding the degree to which developed countries are truly committed to tackling the loss and damage that we experience and will continue to experience into the future. And it is a proxy for understanding the viability of our pathway to future-ready climate resilient development outcomes.
Excellencies, at COP28, Parties committed to ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels’. We must ensure this language is the key underlying frame and intent that underpins the negotiations in Baku and that it is reflected in the revised NDCs that need to be submitted in just 5 months’ time. We need to be assertive and unrelenting in our requirement for NDCs to be Paris-aligned. This is without question the make-or-break NDC cycle when it comes to the critical 1.5c degree temperature limit.
You will all have heard our Prime Minister speak on the need to get the world back on track to limit global temperture rise below 1.5 degrees. This is our redline as well as our guiding star. We will not rest until this guardrail is secured. We owe this to those who will follow us. Our children and grandchildren who will not forgive us if we loose our grip on the only means to make the process of adaptation achievable. We owe this to our brothers and sisters and our families in Tuvalu and Kiribati. We owe this to families across the Pacific islands.
This is the weight that we must carry through our participation in Baku. Azerbaijan is one of the most oil dependent countries in the World. Its prosperity to date as been dependent on fossil fuels. But fossil fuels are not a viable part of our collective future – or at least not part of a future we want to live in. They know that – we know that. As the hosts of COP29, Azerbaijan may not see the world the way in which we do here in the Pacific. But therein lies the beauty of international diplomacy – countries with vastly different perspectives on the same issue are given the platform and opportunity to collaborate and reach agreement.
With these priorities in mind – we also remember that these are international negotiations. You reach outcomes through consensus – not through voting; not through chest thumping. We need to help build the consensus that is needed to secure agreement and make decsions as a collective. This comes naturally to our Government that I am a proud part of. We are uniting different voices internally within our country. We are bringing divergent interests together for our national progress we will bring this same spirit to COP29. This is natural to us. Working together across negotiations as a country united – working together with the Pacific leaders ; working with our experts across the region ; working with our civil society. I am humbled to lead the Fiji delegation to COP29 drawing on the basis of this same spirit.
Ladies and Gentlemen, what will be deliberated across the COP29 agenda is closely linked to the recent deliberations convened during the Forum Leaders Meeting in Tonga last month as well the dialogue in New York within and around this year’s session of the UN General Assembly.
The overarching focus being the escalating impacts of climate change, the downstream effects climate change is having on sustainable development and security, and the colossal deficit that exists between the financing that currently flows towards tackling these challenges and the requisite scale of financing required to build lasting resilience and transition and reshape our economies.
COP29 offers – and indeed mandates – the opportunity to address a core element of this challenge and today I am pleased to have the opportunity to come together here in Suva with our Partners to build further consensus the priorities of Pacific Island countries and to give our negotiators the blessings and motivation they need to defend our interests in Baku.
In closing, I want to reflect on our track record of Pacific Island Countries within the UNFCCC. The PSIDS continue to play a central role as the representatives of urgency, of lived experience, and of both ethics and pragmatism. Our positions are guided by the science and have always been both precautionary and ambitious in our approach. Whether it be our central role in securing the inclusion of the 1.5-degree guardrail within the Paris Agreement or our thirty-year fight for global recognition of loss and damage which has recently culminated in the establishment of the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage, it is clear that when we push as a region, alongside our larger brothers and sisters, we have the ability to influence globally and deliver results.
Before us – is an opportunity that we must ensure does not fall prey to current geopolitics. COP29 offers what may be one of the most challenging agendas in recent years. While COP29 is not a milestone COP by mandate – it is a foundational COP that will set the basis for the means of implementation and the ambition that will define action over the coming decades. In being such a moment, it is yet again cross-roads that requires a strong and united voice – across the agendas, issues, and negotiations. It is incumbent upon us as civil servants representing the people and communities as well as the interests of future generations to establish a bold and strategic shared-narrative and be resolute in delivering positions that are unequivocal and bold.
Excellencies, senior officials, ladies and gentlemen, with these words, I thank you for availing yourself for this launch event and for your ongoing support and solidarity.
Vinaka vaka levu and Danyavard.
18.10.24
