Forum leaders cool heat on climate change
The Pacific Islands Forum has ended without a firm stance on climate change to take to the international climate talks in December.
Transcript
The Pacific Islands Forum has ended without a firm stance on climate change to take to the international climate talks in December.
The leaders of small island nations facing rising sea levels argued the group should push for a global warming limit of 1-point-5 degrees.
The New Zealand and Australian prime ministers wanted a two-degree limit.
Koro Vaka'uta filed this report from Port Moresby.
Conflicting views emerged early on during the summit with small island states like Kiribati and Palau calling for greater action from the more developed nations like New Zealand and Australia on climate change. The major sticking point was the call for emissions to be lowered to the point where global temperatures didn't increase more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels while New Zealand and Australia had stuck with the UN promoted target of 2 degrees.
But now it seems the rest of the forum has agreed to disagree with New Zealand and Australia on the target to be pushed for at the end of year UN climate change conference in Paris. Earlier New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Pacific nations needed to put more pressure on even bigger nations like China as his country was only responsible for 0.15% of the world's emissions. The Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott agrees.
TONY ABBOTT: Australia and New Zealand have already announced very ambitious targets for emissions reduction to take to the Paris conference. New Zealand's got a 30 percent target. Australia's got a 26 to 28 percent target for emissions reductions and that compares to 25 percent for Japan, 4 percent for Korea. China is going to have a 150 percent increase in its emissions between now and 2030.
Kiribati President Anote Tong begrudgingly accepted there were varied views, despite earlier warning of a split among member nations.
ANOTE TONG: It's not the best outcome that we would have liked but we must respect that. Whether we accept that or not is a different question. At this point in time we'd like to be able to sit down as colleagues and agree on a range of numbers rather than one or the other and I think that is what has come out of this meeting.
One thing Mr Tong was happy with was the move away from the current vessel per day fisheries management system where time was allocated to boats and countries to fish towards the New Zealand-led quota system. Mr Key says a change in approach is a must.
JOHN KEY: The resources earnt by the countries in the region is based off selling access to your fisheries on a daily basis. That's fine except technology is changing, boats are larger. They are becoming more proficient and so a greater catch is occurring and if that continues then there is real risk of sustainability of particularly the tuna fishery.
Fisheries ministers from all Forum nations have now been invited to New Zealand to examine the management system in place. Meanwhile regarding the other big agenda issue was human rights abuses in the Indonesian province of West Papua, the leaders urged the Forum Chair and PNG prime minister Peter O'Neill to approach Jakarta about their concerns and discuss their openness towards a fact-finding mission. Mr O'Neill says he has found Indonesia accommodating in recent times.
PETER O'NEILL: If you talk about anything from human rights to self-determination to independence you would have to communicate and talk to Indonesia. The Papua New Guinea government has been doing that for the past few years and we are encouraged. We are encouraged from what we are hearing from Jakarta and it is just the beginning of many steps that are before us.
New Zealand and Australia say Indonesia's sovereignty must be respected.
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