VANUATU has delivered a blunt message to Australia, calling on the major fossil fuel producer to stop expanding fossil fuel production and urgently begin its transition away from fossil fuels as Pacific nations face growing climate impacts.
Vanuatu’s Minister for Climate Change Ralph Regenvanu made the call during a Climate Change Action Briefing in Koror, warning that the world was moving towards an overshoot of the critical 1.5°C global warming threshold.
Regenvanu said the latest United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report made clear that urgent action was required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep the 1.5°C pathway within reach.
He said fossil fuels remained the major source of greenhouse gas emissions and that the international community could not delay the transition away from them.
“We must urgently accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels,” Regenvanu said.
He said countries had only a limited window to act, warning that failure to reduce emissions in the next four years rapidly would make any overshoot of 1.5°C longer and more severe.
For Pacific Island countries, he said, the consequences would be particularly devastating, with increasing climate impacts, loss and damage, reduced effectiveness of adaptation measures and greater demands for climate finance.
“Loss and damage are a reality that currently exists in my country, in the countries represented here,” he said.
“It will only accelerate with any overshoot, encompassing economic and non-economic losses that no finance can fully restore.”
Regenvanu said those losses extended beyond financial costs, pointing to the loss of Pacific lands, heritage and identity.
“Our lands, our ancestral lands, our heritage, our identity,” he said.
The strongest criticism came during the question-and-answer session when Regenvanu was asked what message he had for larger countries, particularly Australia, on fossil fuels and whether Australia was doing enough.
His response was unequivocal.
“Australia is not doing enough,” he said.
Regenvanu described Australia as a major producer of fossil fuels and said it should stop expanding fossil fuel production and start transitioning away from it.
“So, the very least a country like Australia should be doing is stopping future expansion, and it’s not doing that,” he said.
“You need to stop expansion, and you need to start transitioning away.”
Regenvanu said the transition was consistent with commitments made through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process and regional climate commitments.
He also reminded countries of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion, which recognised the collective temperature goal of holding global average temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Despite the warnings, Regenvanu said the 1.5°C pathway remained possible if countries adopted the highest possible level of ambition.
He said this required immediate global commitments to keep any overshoot extremely limited in both magnitude and duration.
For the Pacific, he said, that ambition included a transition towards a 100 per cent renewable energy future for Pacific small island developing states.
Regenvanu said recent floods, heatwaves, sea-level rise and increasingly severe cyclones were all pointing to the same reality. “The need for urgent action,” he said.
