Pacific leaders ready for Paris climate talks Featured
1 December, 2015. Ten Pacific leaders will have a chance to tell the world how climate change is already affecting their countries as they speak at the opening of negotiations in Paris tomorrow.
The two-week United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference is being billed as the last chance to nail down a global deal to tackle climate change.
Tong at Pacific Islands Forum in 2015
The president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, is speaker number 13 in a line-up of leaders that has the American president Barack Obama speaking third, and Russian president Vladimir Putin speaking ninth.
Leaders from Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Tuvalu, Fiji, Nauru, Palau, Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea and Samoa will also have a chance to address the conference tomorrow.
There are about 150 world leaders registered to speak. Last week, the French president Francois Hollande gathered Pacific leaders together before the crucial climate change talks.
There the Pacific leaders signed the France-Oceania Declaration, which calls for a legally binding, ambitious and durable agreement on climate change. Pacific leaders want a target of 1.5 degree temperature rise by the end of the century.
The declaration calls for 'loss and damage' to be included as a stand alone chapter in the agreement, which could mean vulnerable countries are compensated for the effects of climate change.
Many wealthier countries oppose such a provision, and the next two weeks of negotiations under COP21 will be crucial as to whether loss and damage makes it into the final agreement.
The Pacific region contributes to less than 0.03 percent of the world's total greenhouse gases. Climate demonstrators in Sydney called for a focus on the cost of climate change to Pacific Islands.
Pacific leaders will have a chance to tell the world how climate change is already affecting their countries.
RNZI
