A professor of sustainable energy says the Pacific needs to do more to reduce its carbon emissions, particularly in the transport sector.
Transcript
A professor of sustainable energy says the Pacific needs to do more to reduce its carbon emissions, particularly in the transport sector.
The director of Massey University's Centre for Energy Research, Ralph Sims, says greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise with no sign of slowing down.
Professor Sims told Mary Baines Pacific nations need to develop better policies to improve their emissions and give them more resilience to the effects of climate change.
RALPH SIMS: The impact on the islands from sea level rise in particular but also extreme weather conditions which are likely to be more prevalent in the future can make a huge impact on their livelihoods and their future even living on the islands.
MARY BAINES: You've raised an interesting point about whether enough is being done to mitigate climate change in the Pacific as the emphasis may be more on building climate change resilience.
RS: We've had the solutions for climate change for a long time, in terms of the technologies including transport and buildings and industry energy efficiency, transitioning to clean energy technologies rather than using fossil fuels for heating et cetera. So we've known about that for a long time and the IPPC report has given hundreds of solutions over the years. And some of them, many of them, are cost effective. But we haven't had the political will, the political buy-in to do it. And so on the islands themselves they have for example got electricity from renewable energy but in terms of their transport they could do a lot more there individually. On the roads where they have got a number of buses, many of the buses are old and as well as producing carbon dioxide they are producing black carbon which is a short-lived climate force. But the other major challenge they have of course is in the boats. Most of these islands depend on the marine activities and the small boating, not only for fishing, those boats are highly dependent on imported fossil fuels. That's an area they could certainly benefit from if we could get some money for demonstrations to show how to reduce the fossil fuel dependence for their transport systems.
MB: What kind of issues do you think need to be raised at the Small Islands Developing States conference?
RS: The key question is where the funding is going to come from to support their adaptation measures, which might mean storage of water, making buildings more resilient to hurricanes, improving the infrastructure to encourage more cyclists and less cars. The question is what sort of policies can they develop internally to improve their emissions and give them more resilience, and what sort of dependence would those policies require some form of revenue or expertise or capacity building for the island communities to look after their own destiny. And that's one of the biggest challenges. And we've noticed this with the solar PV systems, some of them in Niue for example have been there for a few years but are actually failing because of lack of knowledge and understanding of how to maintain them. We have got to have a long-term view for both supporting their policies and their projects on the ground, in order that they can lead the way in terms of reducing emissions but also learn how to become more resilient to the inevitable climate change which is going to have an impact.
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