My fellow Pacific Island Leaders,
Our fellow Ocean Leaders,
Special Friends.
 
Bula Vinaka and very good evening to you all.

I’d like to begin by expressing my sympathies to the people of Samoa who are still working to contain a deadly outbreak of measles. My heart breaks for the families who have lost children to this tragedy.
 
Fiji is contending with a measles outbreak as well and we are in the midst of a national campaign to immunise our most at-risk groups. I’d like to applaud the New Zealand Government for deploying medical staff to Samoa to combat the outbreak and for assisting Fiji with securing our immunisations.
 
The Kiwi commitment to the Pacific is carried forward again this evening, as you stand with Fiji on the right side of history when it comes to fighting for our oceans and the life they sustain. It’s a pleasure to partner with you in hosting this Moana Blue Pacific Pavilion following the success of our Koronivia Pacific Pavilion last year.
 
From working as a yacht cadet from the age of ten, to serving as an enlisted man in the Fijian Navy and as a Naval Commander, a great deal of my life has been shaped by my time at sea. Today, I lead a large ocean state, which spans 1.3 million kilometers and 330 islands, that is home to some of the world’s most vibrant ocean ecosystems and a people whose identities are bonded by a profound, ancient connection to our oceans.
 
When I speak with my people, they tell me our ocean is changing.  Fisherman in our maritime communities tell me fishery stocks are decreasing. Women selling in our markets tell me the prices of fish are rising as supply becomes scarcer.
 
Our dive guides and tour operators tell me our reef systems are vanishing before their eyes. We – the Fijian people – are all witness to the steady and painful degradation of our seas and marine life. I have to wonder whether my generation will be the last to know a vibrant and functioning ocean ecosystem.
A recent report from the IPCC finds my fears are not unfounded. The climate emergency is an oceans emergency, as our warming world has meant warming seas. Our mangroves, seas grass and kelp fields together represent the most powerful carbon sink on earth.
 
In fact, were it not for the vast amount of carbon our oceans have sucked from the atmosphere, climate impacts would have wrought far more catastrophic levels of devastation.
 
But we can no longer afford to watch from the sidelines while oceans wage the climate struggle on our behalf. The absorption of carbon emissions is coming at a precariously high price.
 
That price to the ecosystems is bleached coral reefs, collapsing fisheries, and large-scale mangrove mortality. The price to island nations, such as Fiji, is the disappearance of fishing communities and oceanic livelihoods.
 
Fiji is committed to using international forums to chart a different future for the oceans. During the Fijian Presidency, at COP23, we launched the Ocean Pathway with the goal of establishing an oceans process in the UNFCCC.
 
Since that time, Fiji’s leadership on the pathway has not receded. It is surging ahead.  We’re embracing this “Blue” COP to secure the global commitments necessary to address the interconnected nature of threats to ocean health. And, we’re leading by example.
 
In the Pacific, we know we’re all in the same canoe when it comes to responsible management of the ocean, and so we’re building a range of partnerships to responsibly manage the oceans. The lines divvying up EEZs only exist on charts and in our minds. Schools of tuna don’t check in at the oceanic border separating Fiji from Kiribati or Tuvalu. Neither do the giant masses of plastic drifting unrestricted through our seas.
The success of individual nations in sustainably managing their patch of the sea is compounded when others do the same.
 
Fiji has partnered with the Marshall Islands to lead the development of the Pacific Blue Shipping Partnership, which aims to dramatically reduce emissions from our domestic shipping fleets. Seven other countries have enlisted, and the Partnership is aiming for a 40 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050. It’s an ambitious effort that will require re-designing our ageing shipping fleets to be more fuel efficient. We’re developing a financial package of 500 million US dollars to fund that transition.
 
Given this challenge extends far beyond Pacific horizons, Fiji is also reaching outside of the Pacific to build a wider, coordinated international oceans campaign.

Earlier today Fiji joined our friends from California to launch the Pacific Rim Ocean and Climate Action Partnership, which aims to unite Pacific states, cities, and companies to cut emissions and implement intentional policies that support ocean health. It’s another bold international recognition of the oceans-climate nexus; a recognition we hope to see reflected in the processes of the UNFCCC.   
 
On Thursday, I’ll be back in this pavilion for the soft launch of a coalition committed to implementing a 100 per cent sustainable management regime for our EEZs, with at least 30 per cent to be declared protected areas by 2030. Fiji is set to launch a national oceans policy, which considers spatial planning around our EEZ, surveillance, security and efforts to tap into traditional practices and values, to achieve this goal. With similar progress by our neighbouring Pacific Island nations, we expect the formal launch of this coalition to be a defining moment in Lisbon next June at the second UN Conference on Oceans.
 
Friends, the economic changes of the 20th century have recklessly tested the resilience of our oceans. For this “Blue” COP to live up to its name, it must be remembered by history as a turning point for humanity’s attitude and actions towards protecting our seas.
 
If we push the science to the side and continue blindly down our current path, our children, and their children after them, will watch the world’s most vibrant and nourishing ecosystems degrade into lifeless wastelands. That pain will be felt acutely by the Pacific people. If we want to preserve the ecosystems that are so foundational to our livelihoods, we must build political will from the bottom-up, harness the concerns and aspirations of global citizens – in coastal and land-locked nations alike – and paddle together, in the same canoe, towards a sustainable oceans future.

I look forward to seeing you here at the week’s end after we’ve secured new recognition of the ocean climate nexus and renewed hope for oceanic people, the world over.
 
Vinaka vakalevu. Thank you