Pacific climate advocates send clear message ahead of Pre-COP31
PHOTOS AVAILABLE HERE
Nadi, Fiji – Pacific climate advocates have made their expectations clear in a striking visual action ahead of the Pre-COP talks in Fiji and Tuvalu. Pre-COP brings together ministers and negotiators in Nadi immediately before COP31, while communities only kilometres away are already living the realities those negotiations are meant to address.
The creative action highlighted five “Red Lines for 1.5°C” as part of the Pacific Climate Justice Demands, a document produced annually that anchors Pacific regional policy advocacy developed as part of a consultative process between a regional network of over 290 organisations, and demand:
No False Solutions: A rejection of technologies, policies and financial mechanisms that allow emissions and extraction to continue while transferring the risks and costs to Pacific peoples.
Phase out Fossil Fuels: An immediate end to new oil, gas and coal exploration and extraction, alongside the phaseout of existing fossil fuel production and consumption and an end to fossil fuel subsidies.
No Extraction: A rejection of new forms of extraction imposed without genuine free, prior and informed consent, binding benefit-sharing and independent environmental assessment.
Protect and Defend Our Living Planet: Pacific peoples must be recognised rights-holders and defenders of the ocean, land and biodiversity we have stewarded for generations, and as legitimate practitioners of environmental governance in our own right.
Non-Economic Loss and Damage Will Not Be Monetised: Responses to loss and damage must recognise the difference between payment and reparation and must never reduce Pacific peoples’ cultures, identities and grief to a monetary value.
Jacynta Fa’amau, 350.org Pacific Campaigner said:
“We will breach 1.5 degrees in the next decade, that is the disturbing reality. Irreversible loss and damage will occur, and has been occurring over the past decades. But how long we spend above that limit is still within the control of decision makers at PreCOP and COP31.
These “red lines” are how we intend to keep the pathway back to 1.5 alive, and I truly hope we see them reflected in the commitments that governments make over the next two months. Those most responsible for this crisis may have been able to ignore us when we weren’t in the room, but now the UNFCCC process has come to our shores and we will make sure they hear us.”
Dr Rufino Varea, Director, Pacific Islands Climate Action Network said:
“These red lines are the mandate Pacific civil society is bringing into PreCOP31. The discussions in Nadi will help shape the priorities and political direction heading into COP31, so this is the moment to make clear what the Pacific expects to see carried forward.
Our communities have spent decades explaining what is at stake. Now we need to see that reflected in the agenda, the political signals coming out of PreCOP, and ultimately in the decisions governments take at COP31. We will carry these red lines from Nadi to Türkiye, and they will remain our measure of whether the outcomes delivered respond to the scale and urgency of the crisis facing our region.”
##
Jacynta Fa’amau (350.org Pacific) and Dr Rufino Varea (Pacific Islands Climate Action Network) will be on the ground at PreCOP in Nadi, and available for interviews.
Media Contact
Dylan Kava
+679 9061989
Drue Slatter
+679 7091345 / +679 8663244
Comments