Pacific Leaders Respond To Australian Minister's Sea Level Remarks

The Guardian

Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton’s conversation is picked up by a nearby microphone.

Pacific leaders have hit out at the insensitivity of an Australian minister’s apparent joke at the expense of low-lying nations struggling against rising sea levels.
Immigration minister, Peter Dutton, was caught on a microphone chatting with Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, and social services minister, Scott Morrison, while waiting for a community roundtable to begin on Friday in Canberra.

Dutton implied that meetings at the recent Pacific Islands Forum in Papua New Guinea had also begun late because: “Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to be, you know, have water lapping at your door.”

A photo taken in December 2008 shows a cemetery on the shoreline in Majuro Atoll being flooded from high tides and ocean surges in the low-lying Marshall Islands. Photograph: Giff Johnson/AFP/Getty Images

Abbott laughed at the comment, until Morrison pointed out that there was a live microphone hovering above their heads.
Marshall Islands foreign minister, Tony de Brum, who has been a high profile advocate for stronger action on climate change in the UN climate process, expressed his offence on Twitter:

Anote Tong, the president of Kiribati, described the joke as vulgar. “What kind of a person is he?” he asked the ABC. “As long as there is this kind of attitude, this kind of arrogance in any position of leadership, we will continue to have a lot of tension.”

Gary Juffa, the governer of the Papua New Guinea province of Oro, focused on the Australian prime minister’s reaction:

Over the past decade, climate change and rising sea levels have begun to strangle life in low-lying Pacific island countries. In De Brum and Tong’s atoll nations people are already struggling with regular inundations, more severe droughts and displaced people.

Storm surges washing across Ejit Island in Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands, in early 2014. Photograph: Giff Johnson/AFP/Getty Images

De Brum has consistently said that even if the upcoming Paris climate talks keep the atmosphere within the (increasingly unlikely) target of a 2C temperature rise on pre-industrial levels, that his islands may become uninhabitable. He and other island leaders have said climate science gives them little chance in a world that warms more than 1.5C.

The furore broke out just hours after the Australian prime minister rejected a plea from Pacific countries to ramp up its carbon reduction targets, which observers called “pathetically inadequate” when they were released in August.

Earlier, Tong told the ABC that Australia’s refusal to consider scaling up its ambitions was disappointing.

“I would really have loved to go back and say yes, we had support, solid support from all of the Pacific neighbours including our developed neighbours. How does it feel? I’ve learned to live with the disappointments,” he said.
It is not the first time De Brum has used strong language to attack Australia. Earlier in the year he said the country had “jerked around” the Marshall Islands by cutting its foreign aid budget.
A traditional owner on Cape York, Gerhardt Pearson, also responded angrily to the comments, calling his views “soft bigotry” and saying they hark back to mission days of the last century.
“We are constantly burdened with the view espoused by the likes of Dutton: it’s one of soft bigotry and low expectations, and it continues to dominate policy responses,” Pearson said.

Pacific Island Leaders Fail To Agree On Climate Change Target

Sydney Morning Herald

Rising sea levels are a significant threat to places such as Kiribati. Photo: Justin McManus

Pacific leaders have failed to come to a common position on climate change after nine hours of tense talks at the Pacific Island Forum.
A final communique has accepted that Australia and New Zealand will not back the push by smaller island states for the rise in global temperatures to be limited to 1.5 degrees.
Kiribati President Anote Tong said the communique recognised that those "on the front line" of global warming were facing a serious problem and were in a "very different" position to Australia and New Zealand.

Tony Abbott, pictured with other leaders at the forum. Photo: Andrew Meares

"It's not the best outcome that we would have liked, but we have to respect that," Mr Tong said.
In a concession to the smaller island states, the forum agreed they could approach the Paris climate summit in December with their own proposal to limit the increase in average global temperatures.
New Zealand PM John Key said his country and Australia stood by the 2-degree target agreed at Lima but added: "There is an agreement that we as Pacific countries accept that, for low-lying states, they are particularly vulnerable and they would seek an even more ambitious target in Paris."
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott stressed after the meeting that neither his country nor New Zealand had made any new commitments on climate change.
"As you know, Australia and New Zealand have already announced very ambitious targets for emissions reduction to take to the Paris conference," Mr Abbott said. "I was very pleased to explain to the forum today what Australia is doing, just how ambitious we are being."
Mr Abbott entered the talks confident he could reassure those who say their survival is threatened without a stronger commitment to reduce carbon emissions.
"I think I have got a very good story to tell on climate change, to tell the Pacific Islands Forum," the Prime Minister said before entering a day-long meeting with 15 Pacific island leaders.
Led by Mr Tong, several of the leaders warned that anything short of a commitment to limit the average global temperature rise to 1.5 per cent would represent a betrayal of their people.
"We expect them as bigger brothers, not bad brothers, to support us on this one because our future depends on it," Mr Tong said earlier this week of Australia and New Zealand.
He raised the prospect of smaller states leaving the forum or Australia and New Zealand being asked to do so, though Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O'Neill played down this prospect.
After the talks, Mr Tong expressed satisfaction that the smaller island states would be able to argue their case in Paris.
"I I am very happy that we will be able to come away with a position that we are not totally disagreeing."
Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama boycotted the forum, citing "the refusal of Australia and New Zealand to step back and allow the Pacific island nations to determine their own futures free from outside interference".
"We have significant differences with Australia over its policies on climate change, in particular, that are clearly not in the interests of the Pacific Small Island Developing States," he said in a letter to Mr O'Neill.
Fairfax Media has seen successive drafts of the leader's declaration where a reference to a 1.5 degree commitment is removed. The final draft will be released after the leaders' retreat.
"There is an internationally agreed target, the Lima target [of 2 degrees], and Australia supports that," Mr Abbott said.
Australia has pledged to reduce emissions by 26-28 per cent by 2030, which Mr Abbott says will be, on a per capita basis, the largest reduction in the world.
"Unlike some other countries which make these pledges and don't deliver, Australia does deliver when we make a pledge."
Economist Frank Jotzo from the Australian National University has said this claim can be backed up based on reductions between 2005 and 2030, although Australia would remain the highest per capita emitter in the developed world.
Meanwhile, Mr Abbott claimed progress on another front, with Mr O'Neill agreeing to consider "some possible mechanisms" for Australian police in PNG to have an operational role.
"The important thing, I think, is to embed Australian police in the PNG police," Mr Abbott said.
"At the moment our police are advisers rather than participants in policing here in PNG and what we need to come up with is an arrangement which makes them participants, not mere bystanders to actual operational policing in PNG."
He was hopeful of "some progress in next few weeks and months".