Australia has been formally asked by Pacific nations to stop using carry-over credits to meet climate change commitments under the United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement.
In a clear rebuff to recent Australian comments, Pacific leaders meeting in Fiji signed the Nadi Bay Declaration, which calls on countries to “refrain from using carry-over credits as an abatement for the additional Paris Agreement emissions reduction targets”.
ABC News reports it came after the Foreign Minister in Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government, Senator Marise Payne, said Pacific states “should be pleased” with Australia’s actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Australia controversially counts some emissions reductions achieved during the past decade under the UN’s Kyoto Protocol towards reduction targets set out in the Paris Agreement.
The carry-over does not breach the Paris Agreement because there has been no international consensus on the rules, but Australia’s decision to count past emissions towards new targets has been widely condemned.
ABC News reports Pacific states have long demanded Australia does more domestically to tackle climate change, given the threat it poses to the future viability of small islands and atolls.
However, Senator Payne brushed off the criticisms last week, telling ABC News; “I think that they [Pacific states] should be pleased that Australia is meeting our Paris commitments, that is something we are absolutely locked in to doing”.
As well as a halt to using carryover credits, the Nadi Bay Declaration, signed at the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF), calls for a halt to new coal mining projects and the phasing out of coal-fired power generation over the next decade.
An earlier draft of the Nadi Bay Declaration seen by ABC News was even stronger in its condemnation, describing the use of carry-over credits as “underhanded”, a reference that was ultimately left out of the final document.
The leaders of Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Timor Leste and Tonga signed the declaration along with non-government organisations and private sector representatives.
As chair of the PIDF, Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama put his voice to the demands, asking developed economies to make their Paris Agreement emissions reduction commitments more ambitious “including and most especially our larger neighbours in the Pacific”.
It sets the stage for a tense meeting in two weeks’ time, when Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison sits down with regional leaders of the Pacific Islands.
“As we look ahead to the Pacific Islands Forum, we should not accept anything less than concrete commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions in line with the most ambitious aspirations of the Paris Agreement,” Mr Bainimarama said.
“We cannot allow climate commitments to be watered down in the meeting hosted by the nation whose very existence is threatened by the rising waters lapping at its shores.”
The Australia Institute’s climate and energy program director Richie Merzian described the Nadi Bay Declaration as “a powerful message to Australia, to lift their game on climate action.”
“Prime Minister Morrison will be in Tuvalu in a fortnight to meet regional leaders, and they have made it crystal clear they will advocate for their largest neighbour to step on climate change, including moving away from coal,” he said.
“The Prime Minister will struggle to sell a sensible and balanced approach to climate change when the Pacific have just declared a regional climate emergency.”
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