A United Nations report said Earth will soon exceed the safe temperature threshold agreed under the 2015 Paris climate accord, and Pacific leaders gathered in Koror, Palau, said the warning came too late for many island nations already living with rising seas, flooding, drought and other damage.
Who Pays for the Polluters
In Melekeok state on Palau’s biggest island, the Pacific Ocean floods into homes when stormy seas batter the coastline. Bol Sebalt, 43, who was born and raised on the low-lying beachfront, said, “We keep telling the legislature we need to move inward,” and added, “But because of a shortage of funding we cannot.” That’s the whole ugly arrangement in one sentence: people at the waterline know what they need, and the legislature can’t or won’t make it happen fast enough.
Sebalt, a legislative clerk, is also a trained volunteer for her local disaster readiness team and is one of 200 people across the western Pacific country prepared to help communities through catastrophic typhoons. Almost a year ago, she moved to a subdivision being prepared inland for Melekeok’s people, where she is the only resident so far. She said funding for plumbing, sewage and enough street light poles for others to move in was sourced in small chunks and much too slowly. “We cannot move faster than climate change,” she said.
That line lands hard because it names the hierarchy plainly. The people facing the flood are improvising, volunteering, and waiting on scraps while the machinery of funding crawls.
What the Pacific Is Already Losing
Vanuatu Climate Adaptation Minister Ralph Regenvanu said, “Loss and damage is a reality that currently exists in my country.” He said it would only accelerate with any overshoot, encompassing economic and non-economic losses that no finance can fully restore, including “our ancestral lands, our heritage, our identity.” Maina Talia, Tuvalu’s minister for climate change, said, “There is no other way out. The only way out for us is to ensure that we continue to push for 1.5, to stay alive, to stay in our countries.”
For years, Regenvanu and other Pacific leaders have urged action from major polluters to limit global warming to 1.5 Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit, above mid-19th century temperatures. Scientists said that target could avoid the dramatic impacts expected at 2 C. Wednesday’s report said the world would cross the 1.5 threshold “in the next few years,” while recommending efforts to bring down the temperature. The leaders gathered in Palau said that would be too late.
Warmer seas would devastate the Pacific’s tuna fisheries, which produce 30% of the world’s catch, and the mangroves where fish hatch, according to the regional scientific organization SPC. This year’s El Nino chaos has left parts of the Pacific in drought while others flooded, and SPC said such events would only intensify. The costs keep landing on ordinary people, on food systems, on homes, on the land itself.
Who Controls the Money
Ahead of each year’s Pacific leaders summit, many of the 18 member states and territories cite climate change as the most pressing discussion topic. But geopolitical jostling from major powers often overshadows it. Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr. suggested this week that countries seeking involvement in the region could instead fund climate projects, including his push to see the sunny region become the first in the world powered entirely by renewable energy.
A geopolitical sideshow between China and Taiwan erupted when envoys from Beijing and Taipei were seated in the same row at the summit’s opening ceremony. Pacific-managed funding intended to finance grassroots adaptation projects has also faltered because major donors have not pledged the hoped-for amounts. Some donors have cited governance concerns with the Pacific Resilience Facility, due to be headquartered in Tonga, while the model is also new for an aid-dependent region where donors are used to controlling where money goes.
That’s the old script: the people closest to the damage try to build something useful, and the donors clutch the purse strings.
Tonga’s Prime Minister Fatafehi Fakafanua said, “International financial institutions have very lengthy, long processes to deliver the direct access funding that we require in the Pacific.” He added, “The PRF was purposefully designed to work immediately for the urgent needs of the Pacific Island people. That is something that differentiates the PRF from the existing financial models that we are using here in the Pacific.”
The Fossil Fuel State Speaks Last
Tensions also remain between small island nations and the forum’s two largest powers and biggest donors, Australia and New Zealand, over climate efforts. Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters in Palau on Wednesday that Pacific leaders understood his country’s transition away from fossil fuels couldn’t “happen overnight” and required greater capacity for renewable power generation. He said, “Australia is highly regarded when it comes to climate change and the talking down of Australia doesn’t happen from outside Australia, I make that point.”
An hour later, Regenvanu said Australia was not doing enough. “Australia is a major producer of fossil fuels,” he said. “The very least a country like Australia should be doing is stopping future expansion and it’s not doing that.”
The report, the summit, the warnings, the flooded homes — all of it circles back to the same arrangement. Those with power talk about transition, capacity, governance, and process. Those without it are already moving inland, volunteering for disaster response, and trying to keep their countries alive while the sea keeps coming.