The French president Emmanuel Macron (centre) and overseas minister Annick Girardin (right) meet with Kanak leaders at the customary senate in Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia. Photo: Twitter / @EmmanuelMacron
The French president Emmanuel Macron has again expressed his hope that the United States will be part of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Addressing the Pacific Community in New Caledonia, he said the moral obligation is known as is the engagement that is needed.
La France a un destin dans le Pacifique. pic.twitter.com/wF01EfeQ3c
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) May 4, 2018
The meeting was attended by three heads of government of Pacific Island countries, several ministers and senior officials.
Mr Macron said in the Pacific talking about the effects of climate change was not an intellectual luxury but a reality lived every day.
Mr Macron, whose visit to Noumea comes six months before the territory's vote on independence, also said France was a power of what he called the Indo-Pacific region and where France would build its future.
He said France had a destiny in the region, pointing to there being more than 1.5 million French people living in the Indo-Pacific zone.
Of them, more than one million people live in Mayotte and La Reunion, which are both French departments and part of the Eurozone, while New Caledonia and French Polynesia are on the UN decolonisation list.
Mr Macron said France played a geo-political and military role in this zone, with the presence of 8,000 soldiers.
He said France played a unique role as it is the second biggest maritime power, with three quarters of its possession in the Indo-Pacific region.
In a tweet following the meeting, Mr Macron said after Brexit, France will be the only power left in the Pacific.
La France, après le Brexit, sera le seul État européen présent dans le Pacifique.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) May 4, 2018
Hours earlier he had met the New Zealand-based governor of Pitcairn, Britain's High Commissioner to Wellington Laura Clarke.
