RELEASES-ForumNews,COP29: SG Waqa and COP29 media briefs

Pacific Island Forum Blog
17 November 2024

“We are now seeking an urgent return from overshooting that (1.5 degrees Celsius) limit, and why many of you will be hearing terms such as 'course correcting, pivoting, or, in plain English, getting back on track for the future of our shared planet,” 

-Pacific Islands Forum SG, Baron Waqa


Friday 15th November, Baku, COP29-- It is the first COP as PIF Secretary General (SG) for former Nauru President Baron Waqa. He elcomed his first virtual State of Play at COP29 media briefing for Pacific journalists, to kick off his Friday morning in Baku. The half-hour online sessions provide Pacific media a chance to 'join' the COP29 from their islands, and to hear from their officials attending the side events, plenary, and negotiation sessions. 

It had already been a long and demanding schedule for the Pacific, and with the most challenging schedule facing negotiators as they head back into sessions on Monday 18th November, SG Waqa commended the hard work of the Pacific team.
“We are here in Baku with our Pacific political climate champions, including the forum chair, the Prime Minister of Tonga. The role of our political champions is to help amplify and influence climate negotiations and outcomes for Pacific success.”
The Pacific’s political climate champions on the ground remain steadfast in their collective efforts to push for climate action, focusing on the critical goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

Back on track
“We are now seeking an urgent return from overshooting that limit, and why many of you will be hearing terms such as 'course correcting, pivoting, or, in plain English, getting back on track for the future of our shared planet,” SG explained.
The Pacific’s unified high-level champions share a range of key priorities, including demands for more accessible and simplified climate finance, new additional funding to meet regional needs, transitioning away from fossil fuels, and strengthened mitigation efforts through ambitious nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

Leveraging Political Champions
PIFs Director of Programs and Initiatives, Zarak Khan, joined SG Waqa in the media briefing, highlighting the critical role of political climate champions in advancing Pacific priorities at COP29 and working alongside CROP agencies led by SPREP in supporting the Pacific climate champions.
“Here in Baku, they have been doing a phenomenal job advocating on the respective issues on behalf of the Pacific region in the various thematic areas that they lead,” Director Khan said. “For example, in the area of climate finance, we have the Prime Minister of Tonga, who is the Forum chair as well, and we have a number of other thematic areas that the other ministers are leading on: adaptation, mitigation, oceans nexus, and just transition, and this is an approach that we introduced through the forum architecture about four COPs ago.”
Khan noted that this strategic approach, introduced at COP26 in Glasgow, ensures alignments between technical negotiators and political leaders. It enables Pacific leaders to augment the work happening in the closed negotiation rooms and lend their weight and presence in political mana where required and advised to help ease the moments where technical negotiations reach an impasse.
“Our technical negotiators on the ground, who are negotiating the legal text of various agreements, including gender issues, are given the support they require at the political level,” Director Khan explained. “Sometimes you need to bring our leaders and our ministers in to arrive at the political solution.”.
“So, what we have been doing over this past week is we have been updating our champions to ensure that they are fully across the latest state of play. We had a briefing with them when we first landed here in Baku, and they are across the various issues, with the Secretary General attending a number of different side events, focused on different areas of the negotiations,” Director Khan says.

Political strategy
The strategic approach of featuring the political champions across side events helps to highlight the Pacific positions and energy for those huddled in meetings where influence is key to securing an outcome that satisfies Pacific positions at these negotiations.
“Our technical officials are being given every support possible to ensure that we get an outcome, the key focus for this particular COP, which is called informally the finance COP, so the focus for all our champions, including the Secretary General, is to try and get an outcome on the new collective, quantified goal on climate finance, or the NCQG, by the end of next week. It is still an uphill battle-- we are still facing a lot of resistance from the developed economies and a number of other negotiating groups on the modalities,” Director Khan added.

Youth at COP29
The Pacific Islands Forum has also supported Youth champions to the COP, building on previous years when young activists from the Pacific were part of the SG Youth Alliance for climate. In October, a call for interest resulted in Pacific Youth Council rep Akken Garrik of Nauru being chosen as the youth representative to COP29. 
Youth are also serving as technical experts and negotiators to government delegations, including Cliance Degoregore Harris of Nauru, at COP29 as an AOSIS Fellow. As well, the technical expert supporting the Fiji delegation under Loss and Damage as well as analysing youth participation at COP29, Renata Varea who also presented at the briefing with SG Waqa and added to his confidence in the Pacific team.
Varea says, “Everyone is trying to come to an agreement and fund for responding to loss and damage; I really have great confidence in the Pacific team here negotiating loss and damage.”
She also applauds the strong presence of young Pacific negotiators. “It is really great to see that among the Pacific negotiator delegation, there are a lot of young people on the ground, supporting their country’s positions and advocating for their national priorities,” she added.

Barriers to consensus
The road to consensus remains challenging, as SPREP Director General Sefanaia Nawadra pointed out in a side event on site.
“The biggest challenge is the countries or interests that are involved in the process, who really are basically attending to slow it down,” SPREP DG Nawadra says. “They pretend to come in good faith like everyone else, but instead, they provide barriers to the urgent progress that needs to be done. This is often driven by their own national interests and those industrial complexes, especially fossil fuels.”
As the Pacific enters the final week of negotiations, the stakes are high. With global emitters and fossil fuel lobbyists increasing their presence, the Pacific delegation remains resolute.
“We will not back down. We will continue to hold the line.”
The COP29 is scheduled to end on Friday 22 November, —ENDS/Sera Sefeti, Guest Editor, COP29 Pacific State of Play.