Climate-threatened Pacific Islands criticize Australia at Commonwealth meeting

APIA, Samoa — Several Pacific island nations singled out Australia to do more to phase out fossil fuel exports during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting which opened in Samoa on Thursday.

Tuvalu’s Prime Minister, Feleti Teo, alongside senior officials from Vanuatu and Fiji, backed a new report from the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, which highlights the significant role Australia, Canada and the U.K. play in global emissions.

The report said that fossil fuels extracted in the three nations were responsible for 60% of emissions generated by such extraction across Commonwealth countries since 1990, even though they represent only 6% of the Commonwealth’s population.

The report’s findings also point to a “stark imbalance in fossil fuel extraction” and criticize the contradictions between the climate pledges made by these countries and their ongoing efforts to expand fossil fuel production, especially in Australia and Canada.

Pacific leaders have long warned that continued fossil fuel reliance threatens the very existence of their nations, many of which consist of low-lying islands that could be partly or wholly submerged by rising sea levels.

Teo, who earlier this year ratified a treaty with Australia to strengthen migration and security ties between the two countries as well as climate change mitigation, intensified his calls for Australia to phase out fossil fuel production, warning that current policies by major polluters amount to a “death sentence” for his nation.

“My view of that commitment is that Australia … is highly morally obliged to ensure that whatever action it does will not compromise the commitment it has provided in terms of climate impact,” Teo said at a press conference in Apia, the capital of Samoa.

“On that platform I’m hoping we’ll be able to leverage Australia’s support and hopefully that will translate into reducing emission levels.”

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who is also in Samoa, said Australia is tackling the “big task” of transitioning its economy to net zero emissions, but cannot be held responsible for emissions from coal and gas exported to other countries.

Wong said that the “vast majority” of new coal-fired power plants are being built in China and other developing nations.

“Australia has to reduce its emissions, but the whole world — if we are going to combat sea level rise, temperature rising — the whole world will have to peak and reduce emissions,” she said on Thursday.

It’s the first time a Pacific Island has hosted the biennial leaders’ summit and climate change is expected to occupy much of the summit’s agenda. More than half of the Commonwealth’s members are small countries like Samoa, many of them island nations among the world’s most imperiled by rising seas.