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Blue Pacific Continent Volume 1 Primer on Pacific Regional Climate Change Action, January 2024

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The “Blue Pacific Continent” is both a mindset and a geographic region. The Southwest Pacific Ocean is home to more than two dozen island states and territories that range in size and population. The people of these islands vary in myriad ways, but the key that connects them is the ocean itself. Many – if not most – have origin stories that tell of ancestors who sailed to their islands across vast distances, and navigating the ocean spaces between their islands meant that the water connected rather than separated them, as scholar Epeli Hau’ofa wrote in “Our Seas of Islands” three decades ago. And yet, changes in the ocean pose an existential risk to the people of the Blue Pacific Continent. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) finds that sea level rise in the region is higher than the global average with some areas of the region seeing 4 millimeters (mm; 0.15 inches) of rise annually. Not only does this rise threaten to inundate low-lying islands and atolls, but rising sea temperatures are also changing ocean currents, weather, and ecosystems in ways that threaten the lives and livelihoods of island communities.

Most of these island communities emit minuscule amounts of greenhouse gases, and they confront extremely high costs attached to many mitigation and adaptation measures.

Thus, the states and territories of the Blue Pacific Continent have long worked together to speak in a collective voice and pool their intimate knowledge of their environments to exert pressure on the world’s emitters and donors.

This pressure is intended both to impel action to address the drivers of climate change and to attract funding for these small countries’ efforts to shift energy use, agriculture and forestry sectors, and the built environment.

The most recent collective action was the 2022 endorsement by the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) of the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent that targets a resilient Pacific Region. The 2050 Strategy comes on the heels of the 2018 Boe Declaration on Regional Security, which defined climate change as the “single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security, and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific.” Boe itself built on a series of previous declarations, and all of the Pacific strategies and frameworks point to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). All Pacific Island countries are parties to the UNFCCC, and Pacific Island territories are also parties via the countries to which they are attached. At the United Nations (UN) and its subsidiary organizations, many of the islands participate as a bloc to press for climate change action.

As parties to the Paris Agreement under the UNFCCC, these island countries prepare and submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) that lay out ambitions for cutting emissions and adapting to climate change impacts. Major development banks and multi-lateral financial institutions are tasked through the UNFCCC and subsidiary agreements to channel funding marked specifically for climate change adaptation (CCA). Among key bilateral donors are Australia, China, the European Union (EU), Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (U.S.). The Pacific Islands individually and through inter-governmental organizations frequently access and utilize multilateral and bilateral funding to develop plans that integrate CCA and disaster risk reduction (DRR) because of the notions of risk mitigation that underpin both.

This volume seeks to collect in one place the names and scopes of action of organizations, agencies, and networks that Pacific peoples use to undertake CCA and DRR action. It also examines the “why” of climate action and points to future challenges as the climate changes.

The CFE-DM’s Blue Pacific Continent Volume II - Reference Book of National and Territorial Climate Change Risks and Plans digs deeper into the individual states’ and islands’ exposure to climate hazards and their efforts to address their vulnerabilities to the impacts of those hazards.