Talk is cheap: Ahead of climate summit, Pacific Elders’ Voice demands actions with tangible outcomes

 By Pacific Island Times News Staff

Rich nations can’t buy their way out of their commitments to significantly

cut their greenhouse gas emissions, the Pacific Elders’ Voice said, arguing that foreign aid alone will not compensate for the impact of climate change on small island nations.

“Real actions on climate change mitigation and adaptation, including for loss and damage, cannot be substituted by Overseas Development Assistance, which, in any case, remains inadequate and well below the levels of 0.7 percent GNI, agreed to by the international community as the minimum level of assistance,” PEV said in a statement.

As nations around the world gear up  for the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held in Belém, Brazil, from Nov. 10 to 21, PEV demands concrete climate actions with “tangible outcomes.”

PEV also reiterated its call for Australia to fulfill its repeated promise to phase out gas and coal and halt the opening of new coal mines.

“Only a commitment to measurable and specific outcomes will enable vulnerable nations like Pacific small island development states to deal with the adverse impacts of climate change on their development and survival,” PEV said.

PEV is a regional advisory group consisting of former leaders of Pacific island states and territories.

The group highlighted the Pacific’s role in securing an advisory opinion from the United Nations International Court of Justice, which concluded that the 1.5°C temperature target is legally binding under the Paris Agreement.

The court also affirmed that all states, particularly the largest emitters, are required to implement ambitious mitigation measures to address the impact of climate change.

“The ICJ opinion not only provides a new impetus to the climate change dialogue, it provides the negotiators and governments, especially from the developing world, a much stronger legal basis for their demands of doing what is morally and scientifically right,” it added.

André Corrêa do Lago, COP30 president-designate, earlier released his ninth open letter to the international community, urging governments, institutions and global stakeholders to respond to the climate crisis with determined action and shared purpose.

“The challenge ahead is not only to identify what is missing but to mobilize what can move - to turn deficits in ambition, finance and technology into forces of acceleration,” Corrêa do Lago writes, reaffirming that the Paris Agreement is working.

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