Partnership or COP-out?

Partnership or COP-out?

Pacific calls for climate action and Australia's bid for the 2026 Climate Change Summit

Friday 7 November 2025, 9am-330pm ( Sydney Time)

In Person: Res Hub, Level 5 in Building 2 (CB02.05.250), UTS Broadway

On zoom:

https://zoom.uts.edu.au/j/89074065555

Password: 811252

Meeting ID: 890 7406 5555

Further info: Dr Nicole Gooch - nicole.gooch@uts.edu.au

Climate change is no longer a distant threat. In the Pacific it is soon expected to displace whole populations. Over half of Tuvalu’s population has now applied for one of the 280 Australian permanent residency visas offered under the Falepili Union Treaty. The Treaty is the first ever security agreement to leverage climate risk - in exchange for granting access to visas Australia gets a veto over Tuvalu’s foreign policy. In the meantime, Australia’s fossil fuel exports are booming - 1.2 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2024. They are set to grow even faster with Australian Government approval of the Woodside North West Shelf Project, a 6 billion tonne ‘carbon bomb’. Yet, in the same instance, the International Court of Justice has ruled that inaction on climate change is an “internationally wrongful act”, opening the door to reparation. Against this background Australia is seeking to host the annual United Nations climate summit in November 2026 - COP31. It has announced a ‘Pacific Partnership’ for the event and claims strong support from regional governments. But what should that ‘partnership’ look like, from a Pacifika perspective?

The C-SERC day-forum explores this nexus and opens space for a Pacific-led dialogue on its causes, its consequences, and the urgent need for justice. How did we come to this? What are the climate justice issues for the Oceania region? How can they be pursued?  The forum aims to generate new conversations and ideas, grounded in Pacifika perspectives, with the goal of shaping a conceptual framework for advancing climate justice in the region.

PROGRAM

The forum is online and in-person at UTS. It starts early on Friday 7 November to accommodate Pacific-based participants. This is intended to be the start of a year-long initiative culminating in COP 31.

9.00-9.15am -  Acknowledgement of Country + Welcome

C-SERC Director Professor Kate Barclay, UTS

9.15-10.30am - Climate Agenda-Setting in the Pacific: Issues, Agency, Process

Talanoa led by 'Alopi Latukefu

Ofa Ma'asi-Kaisamy, Manager, Pacific Climate Change Centre, Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP)

Dr Philippa Louey, Research Fellow, The Pacific Security College, ANU

David Kombakto, Lecturer, Anthropology, Sociology and Archaeology, University of Papua New Guinea

Dr Rufino Varea, Regional Director, Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN)

Jason Titifuane, PhD candidate, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne

10.30-11am - Morning Tea

11-12pm - Climate Mobilities

Discussion Panel

Chair: Professor James Goodman, UTS

Akka Rimon, School of Regulation and Global Governance, ANU  

Associate Professor Victoria Stead, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University

Dylan Asafo, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Auckland

Dr Liam Moore, Lecturer, International Politics and Policy, James Cook University  

12-1pm - Security, Aid, Finance

Discussion Panel

Chair: Professor James Goodman, UTS

'Alopi Latukefu, Director, The Global Centre for Social Justice Leadership and Advocacy

Professor Susan Park, Professor of Global Governance in International Relations, The University of Sydney

Dr Julia Dehm, ARC DECRA Fellow and Associate Professor, School of Law, La Trobe University

Isabelle Zhu-Maguire, PhD candidate, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University

Sione Tekiteki, Senior Lecturer in Law, Auckland University of Technology

Dr Luke Fletcher, Executive Director, Jubilee Australia

1-1.30 pm - Lunch

1.30-3pm - Fossil Fuel ‘Phase Down’ + Critical Mineral Futures

Discussion Panel

Chair: Professor Kate Barclay, UTS

Dr Philippa Louey, Research Fellow, The Pacific Security College, ANU

Adam Wolfenden, Deputy-Coordinator, Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG)

Dr Lai-Ha Chan, Senior Lecturer and Research Associate, The Australia-China Relations Institute, UTS

Dr Suhailah Ali, Director, Climate Justice Program, Jubilee Australia

Raeed Ali, Pacific Community Mobiliser, Greenpeace

Associate Professor Lefaoali’i Dion Enari, Ngā Wai a Te Tūī (Maori and Indigenous Research Centre), UNITEC

3.00-3.30 pm - Thanks, Future Agendas and Wrap up

BACKGROUND

A Pacific-Centred Climate Justice Agenda

Pacific Island Countries contribute just 0.02% of global emissions, yet they bear the brunt of the climate crisis. For the Blue Pacific, climate change is an existential threat (Teaiwa, 2019), a threat that is far more urgent and significant than any geopolitical tension (Sun, 2025). Pacific Island countries have repeatedly challenged Australia’s claim to be acting on climate change while accelerating its fossil fuel exports. In 2019, most members of the Pacific Islands Forum pushed for a fossil fuel phase-out, blocked by Australia. In 2023, the Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific emerged, and is now gaining traction as a precondition for Pacific countries to support Australia’s COP31 bid 

Challenging Power Asymmetries

The forum is set within the context of the growing scrutiny of Australia’s relationship with Pacifika peoples. As climate-related disasters escalate in frequency and intensity, so will demands for reparations for ‘loss and damage’, especially from countries like Australia, enriched by fossil fuel exports at the expense of the Oceania region. The damage is not only environmental but also cultural, exemplified by the UN Human Rights Committee’s 2022 finding that Australia is in violation of Torres Strait Islanders' human rights by failing to protect the Islanders from the impacts of climate change.

Questions surround the deep entanglement of Australia’s climate aid, development assistance and security partnerships in the Pacific, particularly as China’s influence grows in the region. How does this geopolitical jostling for dominance by regional and global powers relate to the Pacific’s climate imperative?

Labour migration is also a key aspect of Australia’s fragile relationship with the Pacific region. Today, 40,000 Pacific Islanders work in Australia as temporary guest-workers under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme (PALMS), however voices denouncing the often-poor living and working conditions of the workers are growing louder, in parallel with calls to examine critically the impacts of skill-shortages in the workers’ home countries.

Finally, beyond the tug of war around migration, aid, security, and emissions, the Pacific is rapidly emerging as the world’s possible next major mining frontier. As the global race for critical minerals intensifies in the name of a green energy transition, the region’s deep-sea mineral resources are drawing significant attention. This potential surge in ‘green’ extractivism risks turning the Pacific, once again, into a ‘sacrifice zone’ and testing laboratory for imperial powers.

Pacific Future Imaginaries

Future climate imaginaries, when shaped from a Pacifika perspective, may look very different compared to those imagined by Australia and reflected in its mainstream media.

COP30 in 2025 offers an important opportunity to bring together scholars and activists to unpack, through Pacifika lenses, the complex relationship between Oceania and Australia on climate change and related policies. This is a chance to build new connections and rethink the future of climate collaboration and climate justice in the Pacific region – and not as Australia’s ‘backyard’, but as its neighbour, the ‘Sea of Islands’.

References:

Sun, W. (2025) ‘Australia’s strategy of denial in engaging with “Pacific family”’. Crikey, 15 September 2025. https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/15/australia-strategy-pacific-islands-china

Teaiwa, K. (2019). No distant future: Climate change as an existential threat. Australian Foreign Affairs, (6), 51–70.

Banner Photos and Map credit - Pacific Community (SPC) - www.spc.int