As Civil Society Organizations serving the most basic needs of Pacific Island people, often reaching to the most remote, vulnerable and marginalized communities in the region, we call upon the Pacific Island Leaders to take strong, decisive, ambitious, transformational and unified positions on the climate crisis, ensuring action-outcomes that are time-bound, measurable and reflect the severity of the human rights, economic and livelihood consequences of the climate crisis for the people of the Pacific and those around the world.
We, collectively as the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, made up of 139 member organizations from across the Blue Pacific, demand that PIF climate resolutions must go substantially further in 2020 than they have in the past, regardless of the ongoing and salient failures of several Forum members regarding climate inaction. Critically, all resolutions we demand are firmly grounded in science and that will set the Pacific on a pathway towards a resilient future, characterized by environmental and human wellbeing.
PIF leaders must, as a minimum, declare that:
Pacific CSOs demand action to address the climate crisis through justice and equity for current and future generations.
PIF leaders must, as a minimum, decide that there will be ambitious action taken on:
The COVID-19 global pandemic, like the climate crisis, knows no borders and is exacerbating inequalities from a broken economic system in which profit is tantamount, it accumulates in a few hands and the majority are left struggling to achieve a decent quality of life.
As decision-makers take steps to ensure immediate relief and long term recovery, it is imperative that they consider the inter-related crises of wealth inequality, racism, and ecological decline – notably the climate crisis, which were in place long before COVID-19, and now risk being intensified. Responses at all levels must:
Pacific leaders will collectively negotiate for a new collective quantified global climate finance goal from a floor of USD 100 billion per year, and be constituted by public finance. Leaders will ensure that these resources must flow directly to highly vulnerable countries (and especially to Pacific Island nations), including through CSOs and NGOs.
Pacific leaders to call for a commitment to transforming the public and private financial system, at the domestic level and globally by 2030, ensuring that financial flows are compatible and in line with a 1.5-degree pathway, climate-resilient development, and just recovery efforts, which includes ceasing financing of fossil fuel projects and investing in 100% renewable energy projects.
Pacific Leaders must resolve to pursue a UN General Assembly Resolution seeking an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the obligations of States under international law to protect the rights of current and future generations from the adverse effects of climate change and will join Civil Society Organizations in working through diplomatic and other channels to ensure international support for the resolution.
Pacific nations will collectively demand the immediate phase-out of all fossil fuel subsidies domestically and internationally, including a resolution covering PIF members.
Pacific nations will collectively demand that financial Institutions fully divest from fossil fuel interests, including a resolution covering PIF members.
Along with a commitment to a safe and just transition away from fossil fuels, Pacific leaders must call for financial support and compensation for the most vulnerable who are already experiencing loss and damage.
There must be adequate intersectional and interlinked responses nationally, and regionally, from all stakeholders and formal justice sectors, to address all forms of gender-based violence against women, LGBTQI people and other intersectionally marginalized people such as women with disabilities, sex workers, women frontline care workers, domestic care workers, and others in precarious work, including during the COVID19 pandemic.
Pacific leaders resolve to support CSOs to launch the 2020 Pacific Youth Declaration on Climate Change during the PIFS Leaders Meeting.
The impacts of climate change on food security are no longer imminent but have become a reality. Pacific leaders must continue to work towards building resilience in key sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, and forestry to help protect food security in a time of multiple crises and risks.
Delayed to November 2021, at the twenty-sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),
PIF leaders must, as a minimum, decide that:
If you support the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network’s policy demands, please sign and share.
This is a time to be decisive in saving lives and bold in charting a path to a genuinely healthier and more equitable future through a just recovery.
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