Tuvalu could face US$34 million a year in damage from flooding and storm surges by 2050. The annual cost could reach $63 million by 2100, the country’s director of climate change told visiting leaders. Those figures framed a Pacific climate meeting where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned Australia expects a summer of floods, cyclones, extreme heat and “extreme behaviour.” Australia faces criticism for backing climate action while continuing new coal and gas developments.
Climate costs and local demands
Jamie Ovia said Tuvalu’s coastal fishing catch could fall by 16% as seas warm, while tuna stocks worth $4 million a year could disappear. “We need time to adapt,” he said. “Tuvalu is doing our part. Will you act with Tuvalu and will you act in time?”
Tuvalu’s prime minister, Feleti Teo, called for faster access to global climate finance so island states can respond to worsening extreme events. “Why should countries like Tuvalu take on more debt to protect ourselves from a climate crisis we did so little to cause? We should not have to borrow our way out of a crisis,” he said.
Tuvalu consists of three reef islands and six atolls, and about 10,000 people call it home. Most of its land sits less than 2 metres above sea level. Leaders from national and global agencies visited to see the effects of the climate crisis, including a land reclamation project that aims to extend an atoll by about 20 hectares with sand and gravel dredged from its lagoon.
Melelusi Sokotia, a 13-year-old student, told the delegation her friends dreamed of “becoming teachers, doctors, builders” but worried whether their island would survive into their adult lives. “We all have one single dream: to grow safely here in Tuvalu,” she said. “We are not asking for peace. We are asking for help and partnership. Please work together to protect small islands like ours.”
Climate commitments and coal development
Speaking with national leaders at a climate summit in Fiji, Albanese said sea levels in the western Pacific were rising at more than twice the global average. He tied the expected summer conditions to climate change and a rising “super El Niño,” saying the forecast could test countries across the region.
Albanese said the visit to Tuvalu showed climate change “must be understood as being something more than about science or targets” and “about people.” He also said the world couldn’t afford to let the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C “just slip from our grasp.”
Australia faced criticism at the talks because it calls for greater climate action while continuing new expanded coal and gas developments. Last week, an Australian state regulator approved a major coalmine development that would be the largest in New South Wales’ history if it gets federal approval.
Fijian prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka said the world was on the brink of overshooting the 1.5C goal agreed in the 2015 Paris agreement. He urged countries to bring forward emissions-cutting plans and said the transition away from fossil fuels, agreed by countries at the Cop28 summit in Dubai in 2023, “is not open for renegotiation.”
Regional negotiations
The Albanese government promised the Tuvalu visit last year as part of a compromise deal after Australia missed out on hosting the Cop31 climate conference. Cop31 will take place in Turkey next month, while Fiji and Tuvalu host a preparatory meeting.
The delegation also included former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, now the chair of health charity Wellcome. After a cultural welcome and a tour of the climate resilience project, leaders held a “sautalaga” meeting, an exchange of views. They voiced support for Tuvalu and called for faster emissions cuts and funding to help island states adapt.