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Pacific nations
This Week in AsiaPolitics

Pacific nations at biggest risk of rising sea levels condemn Cop28 deal: ‘disaster for humankind’

  • Cop28 did not set a deadline for ending the world’s dependence on the worst polluting energy sources
  • Pacific nations, especially Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, are among the most vulnerable nations to be nearly entirely inundated by rising sea levels

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Activists protest on the sidelines of the Cop28 in Dubai. Photo: EPA-EFE
Christopher Cottrell
Pacific Islanders have railed at the “catastrophic” implications of the failure of world leaders at Cop28 to agree a hard stop to the use of fossil fuels, and are now turning inward for solutions in a desperate bid to protect communities at extreme risk of vanishing beneath the sea.
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There are 2.3 million people across the Pacific nations, keepers of old, unique cultures facing the prospect of vanishing beneath the waves as temperatures rise, with nations like Kiribati and Tuvalu forecast to become ocean territory by the end of this century.

“Three degrees is catastrophic for small islands,” Palau President Surangel Whipps Jnr told This Week in Asia, referencing the forecast temperature rise by 2100 that will see ocean levels surge.

“Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, none of their islands are above two metres. In Palau, we have some islands that are above two metres, but we also have islands that are below. The impact will be nothing less than a disaster for humankind,” he added.

A local villager floats in a small lagoon that at high-tide reaches the base of homes near the village of Tangintebu on South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Photo: Getty Images
A local villager floats in a small lagoon that at high-tide reaches the base of homes near the village of Tangintebu on South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Photo: Getty Images

“The reality is those islands have chiefs, languages, history and culture. We talk about the turtles disappearing, but what about that culture, what about that history disappearing?”

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The United Nations Climate Conference, also known as Cop28 and hosted in Dubai, adopted the proposed text for a final climate deal that acknowledges for the first time the need for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” and “accelerating action in this critical decade” to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

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