Build it and hope they come
There is nothing inherently foolish about holding a climate meeting in Fiji. If the purpose is to draw attention to the problems faced by Pacific nations, Fiji is a logical venue. It puts delegates in the region under discussion, rather than in another European conference centre where everybody can admire the catering and agree that something must be done.
The trouble is that Australia appears to have organised a summit for world leaders without first establishing whether world leaders wanted to attend.
The pre-COP meeting is scheduled for 5 to 8 October, with events in Fiji and a leaders’ component in Tuvalu. It is intended to prepare the ground for COP31, which Türkiye will host in November while Australia leads the negotiations. The Australian government has described it as an opportunity to bring the world to the Pacific and place the region’s priorities at the centre of international climate discussions.
That sounds impressive.
Unfortunately, according to a report in The Australian, the government is struggling to secure any heads of government or heads of state from outside the Pacific. Diplomatic sources say there is little international enthusiasm, although European royalty might possibly attend. (That’s what they do, after all) Travel time and crowded schedules have been offered as explanations.
Perhaps they should have asked before booking the rooms.
The government has already committed $4.2 million to reserve accommodation at the Sheraton Fiji Golf and Beach Resort and the Sofitel Fiji Resort and Spa. The department says much of that money may be recovered from attending delegations, and that the resorts were the only suitable venues for an event of this size. Fair enough. But recovery rather depends on having delegates to recover it from.
The broader allocation connected with Australia’s COP role and Pacific engagement is approaching $150 million. That includes staffing, negotiations, travel, administration and regional activity, not merely the Fiji meeting. Even so, it is a considerable sum of public money, and taxpayers are entitled to ask what they are receiving for it.
There also seems to have been a basic error in deciding whom to invite.
Foreign ministers and climate ministers routinely attend these meetings. They are the people responsible for the negotiations and the detail. Yet Australia reportedly aimed its invitations at presidents and prime ministers instead. That may produce a grander photograph, but it also makes attendance much harder to secure.
A useful meeting of ministers could still achieve something. An unsuccessful gathering of leaders risks becoming an expensive exercise in political theatre.
Then there is the story the visitors are expected to be shown.
Are sea levels rising?
The government says Pacific countries are on the frontline of an existential climate threat. Rising seas are certainly a serious issue for low-lying islands, but the physical reality is more complicated than the familiar image of entire nations steadily slipping beneath the waves.
Coral islands are not fixed blocks of land. They are dynamic structures built from sand, gravel and coral sediment. Their shorelines move. One part may erode while another grows. Some islands migrate across their reef platforms.
A 2018 study examined all 101 islands in Tuvalu over roughly four decades. During that period, local sea level rose at about twice the global average. Even so, Tuvalu’s total land area increased by 2.9 per cent. Eight of its nine atolls gained land, and 74 per cent of the individual islands increased in size.
A later study examined 509 islands across the central Pacific. It found that about 46 per cent remained broadly unchanged in area and another 32 per cent expanded. In other words, close to four out of five were stable or growing, although local erosion occurred on many of them.
That does not mean there is no problem.
An island can grow overall while becoming more difficult to inhabit. Saltwater may contaminate freshwater supplies. Flooding can damage roads, homes and crops. A shoreline can move away from one place and consume another. Ports, airstrips and villages cannot simply shuffle across the reef whenever the island changes shape.
But it does mean the standard account is incomplete.
The evidence does not support a simple picture in which every Pacific island is shrinking and eventual disappearance is inevitable. Some are shrinking. Some are moving. Many are stable. Quite a few are growing.
That complexity ought to matter at a meeting supposedly intended to show world leaders what is happening in the Pacific.
Perhaps the summit will still attract an impressive guest list. October is not tomorrow, and diplomatic commitments are often made late. Perhaps the meeting will influence the COP31 negotiations and deliver something useful for Pacific communities.
But at present, Australia seems to have spent heavily on accommodation, logistics and prestige before securing the people whose presence was meant to justify the exercise.
There may be a lesson here.
Before bringing the world to the Pacific, it helps to check whether the world is coming. But that would mean actually thinking before you do something.
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