Pacific Islands want a climate solution, but the US is not listening

By Karishma Vaswani

Earlier this year, Vanuatu, one of the countries most vulnerable to global warming, decided that enough was enough. Leading a global group of  other nations, it got approval for a United Nations resolution to ask the International Court of Justice to clarify the obligations and legal consequences that countries have when it comes to climate change. The case is still pending in the ICJ. 
 

That Vanuatu thought to take its dilemma to the highest court in the world demonstrates the severity of the issue. The chain of islands in the South Pacific has been consistently ranked as the country with the highest disaster risk worldwide. By the end of the century, it’s thought that it and other islands like Tuvalu will be completely submerged, rendering them uninhabitable. In March, it was hit by an earthquake and twin cyclones in just 48 hours, underlining the perils it faces from climate risks. Island states have consistently talked about these challenges at global forums, highlighting the dangers their people are living through. 

Increasingly, it feels like no one is listening. The US has been actively trying to engage with the Pacific states by providing aid and assistance, but the efforts — while well-intentioned —  seem inconsistent at best, haphazard at worst. At a summit in Washington in September, US President Joe Biden committed to work with Congress to request and provide nearly $200 million in funding for the island chains. This, after last year’s summit that saw more than $7.2  billion pledged in new funding and programs for the Pacific Islands region. But much of that has yet to be delivered, as Nguyen Hoang Thuy Tien of Tokyo International University notes, highlighting the challenges of trying to build trust with the island states. 

American engagement in the Pacific is now increasingly seen through the lens of China’s actions. “If you’re in the Pacific, you get this feeling that you’re treated as a territory, not a person,” Graeme Smith, associate professor and senior fellow in ANU’s Department of Pacific Affairs, told me. “The US is constrained by domestic politics, and people in the Pacific are starting to get wise to this. Will the pledges it has made get through to Congress, and what happens under a new administration or party? Particularly on climate change where some American politicians openly deny its existence.”

It is against this backdrop of rising frustration that leaders of the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum will meet this week in the Cook Islands’ capital Rarotonga. The US has confirmed it is sending a delegation led by Linda Thomas-Greenfield, its ambassador to the UN. Beijing hasn’t confirmed who it is sending yet, but earlier this year named Qian Bo special envoy to the Pacific Islands. Since then, he’s been on a charm offensive, pushing for more Chinese engagement in the Pacific. 

While the forum’s agenda is focused on climate solutions, the US and China will be keen to showcase how close they are to the member states and try to influence discussions in their favor. That has led to a fair amount of ambivalence and skepticism from partners, says Associate Professor Tess Newton Cain at the Griffith Pacific Hub at the Queensland-based Griffith University. “What the US calls engagement, some in the Pacific Islands call militarization,” she told me. “That’s concerning for a lot of people. who are worried about how the US’s security deal with Australia, Aukus, comes up against the 1985 Treaty of Rarotonga, which saw the island states committing to a nuclear-free zone.” 

The Chinese have been working hard over the past few years to show that they will keep their promises, particularly when it comes to money. But that funding flow from Beijing is drying up, partly because of the slowdown in the Chinese economy, as it navigates a new era of “small-is-beautiful” development financing. This provides Washington with another window to build trust with the region.

It needs to make good on its climate financing package. Even as overall development financing flows to the Pacific have reached unprecedented levels — $4.8 billion in 2021 according to the Lowy Pacific Aid Map — it is still not enough to cope with the onslaught of natural disasters. According to data gathered and analyzed since 1988, highly destructive tropical cyclones that had occurred roughly twice a decade now occur closer to twice a year.