Wake up call for Oceania

Tuesday, October 6th, 2015

State of the Environment report for Oceania 2015 – Caring for our Common Home was released on October 4 by Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand.

This report may help to wake New Zealanders and Australians up to the serious environmental problems exisiting in their own backyard.

A Caritas indicator included in the publication gives a snapshot assessment for 2015 of how a particular issue is impacting people’s lives – and what room there is for improvement.

Drawing on information gathered from the many grassroots communities Caritas works with in Oceania, the report includes calls for the global community to negotiate a strong, legally binding, and truly global climate agreement.

It calls for national governments to increase climate finance funding and ensure it reaches the most vulnerable.

Among the environmental issues focused on in the report are:

Impact of severe weather-related emergencies
Coastal erosion and rising sea levels
Access to food and safe drinking water
Mining and drilling of the ocean floor
Climate financing for Oceania’s developing nations – to support both minimisation of greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) and adaptation to climate change.

Australasian media coverage often give space to events on the other side of the world, at the expense of events closer to home.

Many New Zealander and Australians remain ignorant of local issues.

As a result there is little political pressure on their politicians to do more that they are doing already.

At the Pacific Islands Forum meeting last month Islands Nations vulnerable to climate change failed to convince Australia and New Zealand to back stronger global warming temperature restrictions.

Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand director Julianne Hickey, one of the Caritas Oceania leaders, will present key findings and recommendations from the State of the Environment report to the UN Climate Change conference in Paris later this year (COP21) as part of the international Caritas delegation.

Caring for our Common Home was launched in Christchurch on Sunday, 4 October, 2015, following a special Mass at St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral.

In Wellington, a special launch and presentation of the report was held on Monday, 5 October at the Caritas main office.

Source