DEPUTY PM HON. BIMAN PRASAD'S SPEAKING POINTS AT THE “POLITICAL LEADERS ON CLIMATE SECURITY” PANEL DISCUSSION. PACIFIC REGIONAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY CONFERENCE

• What does climate change mean in your country? As senior political leaders, we’re keen to learn and understand from you what your country is dealing with.
 
Climate change is the single greatest threat to Fijian and the Pacific islands. Climate change is the gravest threat to the safety, security and well-being of our communities. Climate change is an existential threat to our environment and ecosystems on which all else depends.
 
It is a fundamental security threat. All development gains over the past 50 years stand to be lost on current trajectories of 3 Degree Celsius plus of global warming – all of it.
 
Fiji and all of the island states of the Pacific now see their security and stability primarily through the lens of climate change. All our state institutions and all the tools available to us are being deployed, in one way or another, to return our countries to a pathway of security and stability.
 
• If the Pacific was hosting COP31 – what issues would you want that meeting to focus on? What would you want the parties to agree to?
 
Securing the Pacific COP31 is one of our most important shared goals as a Pacific family today. We will deploy all the means at our disposal as a Pacific family to support Australia to secure COP31.

The Pacific is at an inflection point. More of the same – we are in short dead. Your audience is deeply familiar with this. But the international audience is not. Nor are some of the leaders of large countries.
 
We need a home COP to bring international policy makers, financial institutions, influencers, leaders to see for themselves what our lived reality is – and see for themselves what lies ahead for them in future.
 
Fiji stands to lose over 50 percent of its present land-based economy even at 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming. Our brothers and sisters in Tuvalu and Kiribati stand to lose their whole economy and all their lands at 2.0 Celsius.
 
The Pacific’s world class tourism infrastructure stands barely 2-3 meters above sea level – within full striking range of sea level rise within 3-4 decades. On the highest lands of the Pacific – in the PNG highlands, climate change is wreaking havoc on kaukau, vegetables and on food security in profound ways. I have returned from Lakeba a few days ago and saw the scale of exposure to king tides of a whole community whose history and whose security are so vital to our national well being.
 
Across the Pacific we are relocating 100’s of communities. Across the Pacific we are rebuilding our core infrastructure – water-roads-jetties-ports-airstrips that are degraded by king tides, exceptionally high levels of rainfall and super-cyclones. This toxic cocktail of climate change impacts threaten no other group of countries in the World as it does the Pacific. No other region.
 
A COP31 in Australia and the Pacific will help us bring this message home – visually - not in speeches. A COP31 in Australia and the Pacific will enable our community leaders – women, young people, disabled, elderly, coastal, highlanders to tell their stories sincerely to the World – directly. At the very minimum, this is what the World owes to the Pacific.
 
To those fighting to keep COP31 away from the Pacific – this is my message. To them I say what are you afraid of? Are you so afraid to look at Pacific’s displaced people in the eye and say you are sorry? Are you so afraid to look at our elderly who have seen their homelands washed away and give your commitment that you must do more now and not in future?
 
COP31 in our region will also be a moment when some of the BluePacific’s major homegrown proposals can be presented to the World for its endorsement and support. These will include:

i) Our proposal for the Blue Pacific to be declared as an Ocean of Peace – rooted to our ideas of sustainability and resilience and grounded by our own norms and traditions. 
ii) Our proposal for a fully funded Pacific Resilience Facility to provide speedy response to our communities following climate catastrophes.
iii) Our emerging proposals for an integrated approach to marine protection and conservation across the region to enable the Pacific to continue to provide its global environmental services.
iv) Our evolving regional initiatives in coastal protection, community relocation, green shipping.
 
• One of the big issues we have before us is climate financing, and the loss and damage agenda – Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister is also the Finance Minister – what can you tell us about that?
 
The World is failing the island states of the Pacific on climate finance – woefully. Unlike many other regions, ours has a narrow window to adapt. We can adapt now. We can adapt our economies over the next decade. You move these adaptation program interventions beyond that – it will just be too late. The adaptation window is closing fastest for us. That is why we need a massive increase in climate finance flowing to the Pacific over this decade.
 
The World agreed at COP 29 to a new climate finance target – it needs to get on with mobilising funds at speed.
 
We know only too well that for many communities and many regions across the Pacific, adaptation windows have already been closed. It is too late. These communities simply need to be relocated – justly – humanely and respectfully. Loss and Damage is without question the essential third pillar of the climate financing framework. The establishment of the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage was a significant step forward in maturing the global response to the climate crisis. Unfortunately, this new fund continues to struggle to secure the long-term financing and commitment from developed countries to enable it to fully deliver against its mandate in the immediate to long term. This has to change.
 
• The Pacific Climate Security Assessment Guide states that climate change poses “significant risks for individual, community, national and regional stability” in the Pacific; and that social discord, political instability and violent conflict are all possible. Perhaps let’s start with FIJI - where do you think the biggest security risks are, and what can be done about them?

The risks arising from Climate change in the Pacific are comprehensive, multi-faceted, and so severe that there is very real potential for climate change to directly drive societal instability.

When your crops fail year in and out, it is more likely for communities to resort to other means for survival including participating in the growing narcotics trade.

Conflict over land due to land loss and fishing rights arising from relocation are growing, they are substantial but they are still manageable. This will not remain the case for long.

Climate change is one of the main drivers for urban drift. The associated pressures on safety and security in urban areas are worsening.

The fiscal strain caused by debts to fund water-ports-jetties rehabilitation is showing across many economies.

Violence (gender, youth) is reaching levels we have never seen before.
Losses arising from collapse of coastal fisheries, tuna migration are adding to food insecurity and to violence.

When you add on top of these one or two category five cyclones – you will face pressures on state institutions and on their capabilities in ways that will lead to catastrophic outcomes for stability and peace.

Insecurity and instability arising from climate change is not a theoretical future risk for Fiji and the Pacific. It is the most direct, it is the cruellest and it is the harshest outcome that we are preparing for. We are preparing for this on a war footing and in a short window of time that remains. This is what we want the World to understand.
 
• Some countries are already contemplating migration pathways as one way of managing climate change. Perhaps let’s start with Tuvalu – could you tell us about that process, and the future you want for your people. I’d like to hear from other countries too how they see migration playing out in coming decades.
 
In Fiji we experienced record out-migration following the COVID-19 pandemic. Migration numbers remain high. Following disaster events, we always see a surge in urban drift and out- migration. 10 out of 10 times.
 
You are aware that we are undertaking a comprehensive and measured approach to community relocations. Many more communities will be added to current list of around 40 as consultations across our country proceeds. No community wants to relocate. We need to arrive at conclusions diligently and respectfully.
 
You know as well that Fiji has a high level of inward migration. Migration from coastal communities in the mainland and from the islands into Suva, Nadi-Lautoka belt has been becoming more intense. A significant part of this migration is climate induced as seas rise, coastal farms face salt water intrusion. Overtime hopelessness and helplessness sets in and this gives rise to migration. This is a growing challenge for us.
 
I estimate that already around 15 percent of Fiji’s external migration is climate induced – directly or indirectly. I know some of you are placing these levels to be much higher. We need to become better at measuring this.

We are preparing for a more urban concentrated future in Fiji as a consequence of climate change. Climate induced internal migration is one of the most important drivers of this. Our schools, health care facilities, social services, and low cost housing in urban areas will need to be improved significantly in response. You will see that in the past two budgets in Fiji, we are deliberately increasing investments in these areas as a response.
 
Internationally, we have called on our region to be a fully integrated visa free region – somewhat like the SHENGEN area in Europe. This will be a good insurance policy in face of the growing threats caused by climate change. Allowing freer movement of people and families long before crisis points arise has to be a significant part of our response. Both Hon. Prime Minister and I have a razor sharp focus on securing this.
 
• Climate change means there will be more natural disasters ahead. How do you see Forum members cooperating? Will there be a joint training and deployment of a Pacific response team in the future, and what could that involve?
 
Given our inter-related needs and shared exposure to climate driven extremes regional cooperation and aligned approaches continue to be important to our long-term response planning.

PIF leaders’ decision to establish the Pacific Resilience Facility is an important step in our cooperation to leverage the financing required to respond to disasters and build the resilience of our communities. We hope to see this facility develop into the central regional mechanism for supporting regional cooperation and climate and disaster risk management.

I have argued that the next step after the PRF should be the establishment of our regional development bank to drive our investments in building resilience long before disasters set in.

We will need to own, drive and sustain our efforts within the region. Our external partners may help. We, the Pacific states need to own and drive these efforts. Not the other way around. That is the only thing that will return us to a more genuinely climate resilient development pathway.

Fiji has deployed personnel to support our neighbors in the past and we continue to rely on the capacity and infrastructure of our partners, AUS, NZ, US and France especially to support responses during climate catastrophes. We will continue to do so each time the region makes a call on us.

We will continue to provide safe refuge to Pacific communities whenever called to do so. This is our commitment to our Pacific family.

The international community is doing less than 10 percent of its share today – if even that. We hope that will change. These are repeated crisis that we are responding to day in and day out. They are caused not by our actions – but theirs.

It is my sincere hope that the new regional architecture that we are framing will seek international partnerships with only those countries that are undertaking their fair share of responsibility in rebuilding a resilient Blue Pacific. The time for free-riders is long gone.
 
• What would you like to see the Pacific Islands Forum and its members doing next on climate change? How would you like to see climate change reflected in the Ocean of Peace concept?

The Ocean of Peace concept put forward by the Honourable Prime Minister of Fiji and supported by Pacific Leaders frames a holistic concept of ‘peace’ and ‘security’. Peace in the Pacific can only be maintained and achieved if threats to sovereignty, economic functionality, and environmental integrity are managed through cooperation and cohesive policy making. Climate change is without question the single most important security threat and by extension the most intense threat to peace and stability. It will lie at the heart of the Ocean of Peace. There will be no peace without a forceful approach to rebuilding resilience across the infrastructure – human and physical - that makes life and livelihoods in the Blue Pacific feasible and sustainable. There can be no peace in the Pacific without climate risk being mainframed across everything we do – on land and across our seas.