Tuvalu Holds Australia Accountable for Climate Change

Tuvalu, a low lying island in the Pacific, wants Australia to review its coal mining policies. The Tuvaluan Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga urged the leaders of Australia to reconsider their coal mining policy and the $64 million they are getting from selling their coal.

The small island nation is facing the brunt of climate change. In recent years, it has been affected by king tides and increased cyclonic activity.

Sopoaga said there is no point in Australia giving Official Development Assistance (ODA). “We appreciate it of course, but giving it at that same time as continuing polluting the atmosphere and increasing the cost of adaptation I think just doesn’t work well.”

In 2017, the Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, had labeled Australia a prominent member of the ‘coalition of the selfish’, referring to a group of industrialized nations that put the welfare of their carbon polluting industries before the environment, at the cost of Pacific island countries.  

Tuvalu is set to host the Regional Pacific Forum in August later this year, and climate change experts and analysts say its going to be ‘big fireworks’ . The islands are expected to raise their voices. In 2018, the Pacific leaders had called climate change ‘the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and well-being of the people of the Pacific’. Sopoaga had been very much vocal against Australia as it did not support a section of agreement calling on the United States to return to the Paris agreement on climate change.

The leaders had reaffirmed the importance of immediate urgent action to tackle climate change.