'Thin' Pacific island teams at COP26 spark fears of inequity

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Tagaloa Cooper, the director of climate change resilience at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, said it was “inequitable” that those most impacted by climate extremes would not be present at the summit. For some countries the 1.5-degree threshold marked an ambition, but for the Pacific islands it was a “compromise” since they were already facing severe impacts from climate change. Failure to limit warming below that level could mean these countries will lose 30%-70% of their land-based economies and entire islands to rising seas, said Satyendra Prasad, Fiji’s ambassador to the U.N. Not having all Pacific leaders present, or having “thinner” negotiating teams, means it will not be possible for these countries to be physically present at all meetings during the summit, Prasad said. The participation of civil society will also be muted, Prasad added, due to this “interwoven and compounding set of disadvantages.” The small islands have a “disproportionately important role” in global climate negotiations because they are the most vulnerable and their leaders have the “moral authority to urge greater climate action,” since failure to do so is an existential threat to their countries, said Nigel Purvis, who was a U.S. State Department climate negotiator for the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations.