Burns describes his involvement in helping prepare the FCBCO conference as very much "in the background", but that one of the FCBCO's main themes is caring for the earth and sea.

He says the worsening realities for Oceania are real and cannot be overlooked.

One Papua New Guinean woman who spoke out at COP27 was Ursula Rakova.

She castigated the industrialised nations that still refuse to limit fossil fuel use.

While she welcomed the agreement reached at COP27 on loss and damage funding, she says she's "not confident ... industrialised nations will want to give money to loss and damage while ... continuing to extract fossil fuels.

"Because if they really want to save the earth, especially these smaller islands in the Pacific and around the globe, they will have to walk their talk."

Like Rakova, many FCBCO members live with the realities of major changes affecting our common ocean home. They want change, but progress is slow.

FCBCO member countries include American Samoa, Cook Islands, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Marian Island, Papua New Guinea, Western Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, and expert contributors to the conference from Fiji, Tonga, Niue and Australia.

The FCBCO bishops will meet in Suva next February - they meet only once every four years.

The recent earthquakes that devastated parts of Indonesia and Solomon Islands should be a wake-up call for all leaders, says FCBCO president Archbishop Peter Loy Chong.

To provide the bishops with some extra information and perspective about the sea theme, a preparatory online event has been organised with the Australian Catholic University.

Chong, who is also Archbishop of Fiji, will give the welcome address at next week's online event and says he remains "deeply concerned about the worsening realities for people to recover from natural disasters in our region."

He hopes the preparatory online event will generate insights and recommendations from the peripheries for the FCBCO Assembly to consider in February 2023.

The FCBCO meeting will be the first time in 16 years that Pacific Island nations will have the opportunity to host a group of experts along with often marginalised Pacific voices.

Source

• Supplied: ACU
• RNZ
• interest.co.nz

The Christian youths have been at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) with an agenda of their own: to dramatise the hurt the environment is suffering and and, with it, the entire human race.

,Joe Bongay says the protests aim to draw attention to the need to care for the earth, in line with Pope Francis's encyclical "Laudato Si': on Care for Our Common Home."

"When you sing about it, when you clap about it, it reminds people of their moral obligations toward caring for what we all share, which is the common earth that we all live in," he says. The changing climate is affecting ordinary people across Africa.

The United Nations has predicted the drought in East Africa alone will cause over 50 million people to suffer from acute hunger by the end of the year.

"We are struggling to survive in terms of food, in terms of hunger, and so many other problems brought about by climate change. Africa is at a point where it can't even feed itself," Bongay says.

Rita Uwaka expressed discomfort with the presence of fossil fuel lobbyists at the COP27 event.

"The so-many corporations taking over the climate space are hijacking and manipulating the negotiation process, and we feel that these criminals fuelling climate crises need to be kicked out.

"It's high time that there is sanity in COP. And the only way we can get sanity and justice is to make sure that these polluters pay but also (are) kicked out of the climate negotiations," she says.

Uwaka is angry with leaders for seeking "false solutions" to the climate emergency.

"Take carbon credits for instance. It means you have to keep polluting in the developed countries, and then you come to Africa to plant trees to absorb the carbon, but you are not stopping pollution at the source. That is a false solution, and we reject it," she says.

Agro-commodities companies "are in the negotiation space; they are fuelling a lot of land grabs in Africa - taking over forests, cutting them down and replacing them with plantations," Uwaka points out.

"And this increase in deforestation as a result of agro-commodities expansion is fuelling climate change. But here, they are putting it as a solution.

Uwaka says local communities in Africa and other developing countries should be leading the search for solutions in which accessible and affordable renewable energy is encouraged.

"We want solutions like agro-ecology, where you put food production in the hands of the people. We want community forest management methods that put the management of our forests in the hands of communities."

Bongay says he is opposed to the proposal that some kind of carbon insurance should be instituted.

"We can't afford it.

"Developed nations that are getting the profits at the expense of humanity and the environment should be able to pay their climate debts and reparation to those who are most vulnerable."

Source

• UCA News

Without significant movement at the forthcoming COP27 climate talks in Egypt, a pivotal vote at the next UN general assembly meeting, brought by the tiny Pacific islands of Vanuatu, could open the floodgates to international climate litigation.

A core group of 16 states led by Vanuatu, will table a draft resolution at the general assembly in December requesting that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gives an "advisory opinion" to clarify the rights and obligations of states under international law in relation to the adverse effects of climate change.

Vanuatu needs only a simple majority of members present and voting (50% plus one), and support is growing. If successful, the baton passes to the ICJ to bring legal clarity to this complex issue.

The advisory opinion would be non-binding. Nonetheless, such an opinion draws enormous moral power and legal authority. Although the vote takes place after COP27, Vanuatu's initiative could have an influence on negotiations in Egypt.

Responsibility and compensation for loss and damage

Low-income island states like Vanuatu have contributed the least to climate change, but as a group are the most directly affected by it.

For low-lying atolls in particular, sea-level rise poses an existential threat - some Pacific nations will be entirely underwater by the end of the century.

So it's not surprising to see states seeking clarity from the ICJ. Vanuatu has taken the lead in going to international courts, but others could follow suit.

As far back as 1991, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) first called for a mechanism to compensate countries affected by sea level rise.

These days, there are calls for "loss and damage" payments to address impacts associated with climate change that cannot be adapted to.

But repeated attempts to raise the profile of loss and damage within the negotiations have been met with hostility from rich countries.

At COP26 in Glasgow last year, AOSIS, supported by a coalition of 134 developing countries and China, called for a new facility to finance loss and damage, but this was firmly blocked by the US and EU.

Vanuatu is one of many small island states in the Pacific threatened by rising seas.

The costs of responding to climate disasters in developing countries could be in the trillions of dollars by 2050, and rich countries will want to avoid any legally binding commitment to meet these costs with public resources. But an ICJ advisory opinion could help unstick negotiations, as the threat of expansive litigation in the future may encourage the rich countries to capitulate.

Diverging interests

All of this plays into the increasingly contentious geopolitics between developing island states and larger, richer nations.

A simple divide between rich and poor, north and south, or in the lingo of climate policy "Annex I" and "non-Annex I" countries does not tell the whole story.

For instance, many middle-income "emerging" countries are rapidly industrialising.

Their fast-growing emissions are causing their interests to diverge from those of small island states, and it is unclear whether the large group of developing countries will remain united in loss and damage negotiations.

Middle-income countries such as China's Hong Kong are not necessarily on the same side as low-income islands.

Recognising the power of small states

Vanuatu's initiative acknowledges the failures of the climate change negotiations but exemplifies the unique ways that small island developing states can exercise power.

First, the recognition by the country's president that the ICJ is "the only principal organ of the UN system that has not yet been given an opportunity to help address the climate crisis" is extremely insightful.

This seemingly banal observation about a process with no legal force, actually carries huge political significance because, if given the opportunity, the ICJ could make a judgement that powerful polluting countries would rather not have to hear.

Second, Vanuatu's initiative is triggered by the low level of ambition under current nationally determined contributions (the amount each country pledges to cut its emissions by).

International law requires states to prevent harm to the environment and protect human rights.

At best, these obligations are not being met; at worst, they are actively being undermined by the lack of transformative climate action being demanded by vulnerable states.

Third, this initiative is being spearheaded by a country of just 300,000 people across 83 islands and atolls, many of which are literally going underwater.

This is a remarkable example of the kind of leverage that can be exercised by small and vulnerable states.

In the absence of conventional sources of power (size and military might), island states have been able to build multilateral coalitions and leverage institutional forms of influence (such as their UN membership, international law, and moral persuasion) to redress the imbalance.

Powerful nations should stand up and take notice. Vanuatu and its partners are pursuing a ground-breaking diplomatic strategy, and others will likely follow.

But regardless of the ICJ initiative outcome, any acknowledged responsibility for loss and damage caused by climate change will only have meaningful effects when countries redress them. For the sake of the smallest, most vulnerable nations on earth, it's high time that they did.

• Emily Wilkinson Co-director, Caribbean Resilience and Recovery Knowledge Network, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus
• Matt Bishop Senior Lecturer in International Politics, University of Sheffield
• Nadia Sánchez Castillo-Winckels Visiting Research Fellow, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University
• First published in The Conversation. Republished with permission

A YouGov poll commissioned by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod) shows nearly six out of ten Catholics feel the Government has done too little to tackle climate change in the last year.

20 percent of Catholics and 24 percent of Christians think the Government is committed to its net zero target and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

One of those hoping for urgent action at an international level is UK bishop John Arnold.

"It is vital that steps are taken to limit global temperatures," he said just before COP27 opened. The conference runs from 6 -18 November.

In a statement prepared in consultation with Cafod, Arnold says it's our Christian duty to protect our planet for future generations.

"Pope Francis tells us in his encyclical Laudato Si' that our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with God - to fail to do so damages our relationship with God."

Arnold says he will be praying for world leaders that they can develop solutions to the urgent challenge.

"The planet is in danger," he says.

"Recent scientific reports show we are still off track to keeping us all safe and we know it is the poorest communities in our world who are suffering most from a crisis they did not cause.

"No more so than our brothers and sisters in East Africa, who are experiencing the worst drought for 40 years. This has left many millions on the cusp of starvation.

"We need concrete action to keep us within a 1.5 degree temperature rise," Arnold says.

"We need to focus on investing in renewable energy and move away from fossil fuels. At COP27, we need action to shift to a food system which does not harm our planet and has feeding all people nutritious food at its heart.

"We know that the world faces a financial crisis but we hope that governments can come to a solution where those most in need are put at the top of the agenda, with those who have caused the climate crisis providing their fair share.

"Pope Francis reminded us that the climate is a common good belonging to all and meant for all..."

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is also speaking out about the urgent need for climate justice.

"The climate emergency is an existential global threat that requires a global response", he says.

African Archbishop Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa agrees.

"The solutions to this crisis must not continue the business-as-usual approach ... at the expense of the world's poor."

After initially saying he'd skip the conference, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has changed his mind and is attending the COP27 climate change summit in Egypt.

Over the next two weeks, the eyes of the world will be on the world leaders discussing the shared challenge the climate crisis presents.

Source

• The Tablet