The Mangere electorate MP, who won his seat for the fourth time with another massive majority, is now the Minister for Pacific People and Associate Minister for Courts and of Justice.

"Never in my dreams did I imagine I would have this opportunity when I was sworn in as a new minister for this Labour-led Government," he says.

He says his audience with the Pope, along with other ministers from governments around the Pacific was personally quite significant given his own upbringing.

"The meeting had been organised by the South Pacific Forum who were seeking His Holiness' blessing before Forum members travelled to Bonn Germany for the Climate Change COP23 meetings," Sio says. "As Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was busy with trade and APEC meetings, it fell on myself and Minister James Shaw to represent New Zealand.

"It was a particularly poignant and heartfelt experience given my father is such a faithful Catholic who raised all of us in the Catholic religion."

Pope Francis affirmed his desire to see world leaders combat climate change. Sio was one of New Zealand's representatives at the South Pacific Forum, along with Minister for Climate Change James Shaw.

Source

• Stuff
• Image: Stuff

Fiji is the first small island state to preside at UN climate negotiations since they began in the 1990s.

The country's chief negotiator, Nazhat Shameem Khan, said others should not underestimate small states.

"If you think you're too small to make an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito," she said, attributing the quote to Anita Roddick, the founder of the cosmetics company The Body Shop.

Fiji's hosting of COP23 is significant because low-lying islands are playing the role of canary in the mine of international climate negotiations.

"Fiji being the chair this year sort of brings it home," said Rebecca Eastwood, advocacy coordinator for the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach.

As the sea level rises, Pacific island leaders have begun facing the difficult decision of displacement for some of the 1.7 million inhabitants.

"They won't have anywhere to go. And so I think that's as stark an example as you can find on the impacts on small island nations," Eastwood said.

Fiji has enlivened a conference centre in Bonn, Germany, with canoes, dancers, huge photographs of palm-fringed islands, virtual reality shows and flowers.

At the indoor Fijian pavilion, delegates can also try out virtual reality glasses with 360-degree views showing young people re-building homes devastated by mudslides.

"We wanted to think 'how do we bring Fiji to Germany?'" co-director Kvaku Aning said. "Short of being able to smell it, or feel the rain or the sun on you, this is the best thing."

Many delegates say the Fijian approach makes an often abstract debate about greenhouse gas emissions more real. "It delivers a really stark message," said Elina Bardram, head of the European Commission delegation.

Source

• Stuff
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Stuff

En route to United Nations COP-23 Climate Change Conference in Bonn, they took part in a Pacific Island Leaders Forum discussion with the Holy Father.

The Pope received in audience the leaders of the "Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat" from the eleven island states.

Shaw said delegates from Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia read statements at the Vatican meeting on different facets of the climate challenge.

Pope Francis responded drawing on his encyclical of 2015, in which he described climate change as a global problem with grave implications.

"He is extremely concerned about the territorial threat from rising sea levels and about the state of the oceans," Shaw said.

He is continuing to use the weight of his office and his influence to draw attention to the environment in general, but climate change specifically.

"The reason it's such a big deal for the Pacific Islands is that he's now drawing attention specifically to the immediate threat that the islands are facing."

Before he left for the meeting Shaw said, "We want to really show that we stand with our Pacific Island neighbours," Shaw said.

"It is an important meeting... The status of it will mean a lot to them and I think it's really important we stand alongside them."

And if you're wondering what one wears when they have an audience with the Pope, Shaw said he would probably wear a suit.

Read the Pope's statement

Source

• Stuff
• Vatican Radio
• RNZ
• Zenit
• L'Osservatore Romano
• Image: L'Osservatore Romano

They have committed themselves to do more to help address the effects of climate change within their own faith communities, as well as make specific calls for increased ambition and action by Parties and non-state actors.

The Fiji Council of Churches, which includes the Catholic church, is among the signatories.

The Charter:

• asks States to take bold action to rapidly reduce emissions, in line with the 1.5°C goal
• seeks an effective Facilitative Dialogue that delivers:
  • greater pre-2020 ambition
  • improved NDC post-2020 emission reduction targets
  • speeding the advance to net zero emission economies
  • increased and innovative public and private finance to enable achievement of the 1.5°C goal
• urges the global community to support through sustainable financing, capacity building and technology transfer for ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation, mitigation, and disaster risk reduction as cost-effective tools for all small island developing nations

Fiji's prime minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama is the president of COP23, the 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

The conference began in Bonn Germany on Monday 6 November.

The summit is being held in Bonn because Fiji does not have the resources to handle the logistics of hosting such an event, which is expensive to organise for the thousands of international delegates expected to attend.

Although the COP23 is understood to be mainly technical in nature, Fiji hopes to draw attention to the threat weighing on the inhabitants of the Pacific islands - particularly the Kiribati, Tuvalu and Marshall islands.

"We who are most vulnerable must be heard, whether we come from the Pacific or other Small Island Developing States, other low-lying nations, and states or threatened cities in the developed world like Miami, New York, Venice or Rotterdam," Bainimarama said in a speech last May.

Read the Charter

Source

• cop23multifaith.com
• France 24
• Fiji Times
• Image: UNESCO

The comment comes just hours after confirmation that Fritch will join a Pacific Islands Forum delegation to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican next month. The forum coincides with the COP23 climate change conference in Germany.

The pro-independence opposition party, Tavini Huiraatira, said it wondered whether it was the same Édouard Fritch who, for 30 years, defended the French nuclear weapons tests as being clean.

It also pointed out that Fritch castigated the Tavini politician Antony Geros for hanging a crucifix on the territorial assembly wall in 2004.

It added that Fritch has been urging a separation of the state from the church.

Fritch is the former son-in-law of the veteran French Polynesia politician and five-times president 86-year-old Gaston Flosse.

He was the second in command in Flosse's pro-France Tahoeraa Huiraatira party and his heir-apparent. But the two have subsequently fallen out.

Fritch's supporters went on to form a new party, the Tapura Huiraatira. Flosse's party has since lost more than half its deputies to it.

Fritch became president of French Polynesia in September 2014 after his predecessor Flosse was forced to resign over a conviction for corruption.

Flosse had stepped aside after failing to secure a pardon from President Francois Hollande over the conviction which was upheld by France's highest court in August 2014.

Flosse was convicted for running a vast network of phantom jobs to support his political party in one of the biggest cases of its kind in French legal history.

He was sentenced to a four-year suspended jail term, a large fine, and banned from public office for three years.

He recently announced he intends to stand in the 2018 elections

• RNZ
• BBC
• RNZ
• RNZ
• Wikipedia
• Image: BBC