Maintaining statehood of Pacific Islands: An international law approach to the existential nature of the climate crisis (original) (raw)
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Thinking Globally, Acting Regionally: The Case for a Pacific Climate Treaty
Pacific Islands Development Forum, 2016
The Model Pacific Climate Treaty presented in this report is a draft model treaty for the Pacific region aimed at averting the multiple threats posed by climate change. The initiative of a Pacific Climate Treaty builds on the momentum of the Paris Agreement adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Although the adoption of this new international climate change treaty marks a major breakthrough in international diplomacy, the advances made with the Paris Agreement are mainly procedural. In contrast, the Model Pacific Climate Treaty contains substantive regional targets that combine climate, development and human rights objectives. For example, the Treaty provides a bold example of the region’s commitment to keeping global temperature rise well below 1.5°C by banning new coal or fossil fuel mines in the territories of State parties. The Model Treaty also contains a clause aimed at securing the perpetual sovereignty and rights of Pacific Island peoples and their territories, in the face of the existential threats posed by climate change to many Pacific Island nations and communities. As for institutions, the Treaty sets up a Pacific Islands Climate Commission to further enhance regional cooperation and promote Pacific leadership in meeting the challenges posed by climate change, and a Pacific Islands Climate Compensation Fund to help facilitate compensation for Pacific Island communities and nations affected by climate change from actors with significant historical responsibility for climate change. Overall, the Treaty is aimed at filling glaring gaps in the protection of those who are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, while inspiring more ambitious action in other regions and at the global level.
Introduction: The Politics of Climate Change in the Pacific
2018
The introductory chapter makes the case that within the grand architecture of global climate governance, analysing regional complexes in the Pacific provides new insights into the ways climate change is constructed, governed, and shaped by—and in turn shapes—regional and global climate politics. Three claims are made. First, the Pacific is not just ‘any region’, rather the Pacific has been constructed as the frontline of climate change. Second, climate change reinforces the notion of regional solidarity in the Pacific institutionalized in regional organizations; however, these organizations have become heavily dependent on external donors in combatting climate change. Third, Pacific states have advocated for important changes to the global architecture of climate finance, yet contestation over key elements of climate finance leaves the region poorly served.
Because they are at the frontline of climate change, Pacific islands’ governments and populations have early alerted on effects of sea level rise, a phenomenon that raises an urgent and existential threat in this part of the world. Among the legal questions emerging from that emergency, consequences on territorial integrity and sovereignty, State continuity, permanence of maritime limits and boundaries, as well as protection of human rights, are of crucial importance. Pacific islands’ representatives pushed for more awareness on those issues, and they are also actively participating to the construction of legal responses, particularly in the framework of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). This article proposes an analysis of consequences of sea level rise from an international law perspective, focusing on Pacific States and territories. Effects of sea level rise being more present and documented in Oceania than in any other area in the world, a regional approach deserves specific attention and can usefully serve a general reflection on these challenges. The text thus aims to study impacts of sea level rise on territorial integrity and human rights at a regional scale, and to address more general prospects on development of international law.
Legal consequences of ocean change in the South Pacific – outline of the problem
Lex Portus, 2019
Global climate change scenarios are seen as future concerns, but this is not the case for the Pacific island countries and territories. The natural sciences have already built substantial knowledge about the oceanographic, geological and atmospheric processed associated with global warming and ocean change. Nonetheless, deep views from the social sciences, as well as legal perspective, need to be collected, analysed and executed, in order to know what happens when the climate change effects threaten the viability of sovereign states. Small island developing states contributed the least to global warming, yet they are suffering the most from its effects, while legal consequences of losing the most or all of their territory will lead those nations to the threat of losing sovereign status in the international arena. The 8 Pacific Ocean, being the largest water basin on Earth, remains an isolated region in terms of geopolitics and research. This article is, therefore, a modest attempt to collect models and scenarios of the future of the Pacific states concerning their full existence as the equal legal entities, but also to present some international law proposals in this matter. Secondly, its goal is to sensitize European readers to certain issues of the geographically remote South Pacific, which might eventually affect all of us.
Climate Change Challenges to Security in the Pacific Islands Region
Security, Cooperation and Regional Architecture in Oceania
Executive Summary --The Pacific Islands are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. -- Direct security impacts may include diminished access to fresh water, local food supply and coastal infrastructure damage. -- For atoll island nations, climate-related sea level rise is an existential threat. -- Areas for cooperation to manage the threat are mitigation, adaptation and response, plus knowledge creation and dissemination in support of those initiatives. -- The Pacific Islands should promote and exploit opportunities for regional collaboration to better manage mitigation, adaptation and response to climate change, and to develop and disseminate better knowledge in support of those activities.
"We as Peoples Have the Right to Exist": Threatened Nations and Climate Justice
Climate change currently affects several states and their citizens around the globe. As sea level rise is threatening to make some states completely uninhabitable, small island states serve as examples of states at the greatest risk. This review essay analyzes three recent contributions to the literature on climate change and the future of endangered populations. These books offer timely contributions regarding the prospects of threatened nations, as well as addressing the shape and content of global governance in the era of Anthropocene. The authors suggest some interesting and novel innovations, particularly for updating the international legislation surrounding climate governance. At the same time, given how unpredictable a process climate change is, the solutions we come up with should perhaps be bolder. Forthcoming in Pacific Affairs 90(4) (December 2017). For full paper, please contact the Author.
Climate Change, Legal Governance and the Pacific Islands: An Overview
2012
Abstract: The Pacific island region is comprised of a number of nations spread across a large ocean area. The region is also biologically and culturally diverse, nevertheless the countries share some commonalities. Relevantly, each of the countries is legally pluralist creating a complex context for law-and policy-makers charged with developing legal strategies to address environmental challenges such as climate change.
New Zealand Geographer, 2019
This book series addresses a timely and significant set of issues emergent from the study of Environmental [sometimes referred to as "natural"] disasters and the Series will also embrace works on Human-produced disasters (including both environmental and social impacts, e.g., migrations and displacements of humans). Topics such as climate change; social conflicts that result from forced resettlement processes eventuating from environmental alterations, e.g., desertification shoreline loss, sinking islands, rising seas.