Transcript
KRISHNEIL NARAYAN: It's an amazing huge opportunity, actually. It's the first time that a small island nation has taken leadership of this huge UN conference on climate change and that will put a lot of pressure on the Pacific to take on the huge emitters on climate change. And Fiji is not only the president of the COP23 meetings, it is also the chairing the UN Ocean's Conference again. So, two major conferences this year which, for the first time, a small island nation is chairing. That provides us with a platform to, again, highlight the impacts of climate change on the Pacific and for the Pacific to take leadership even further in trying to reverse the impacts of climate change.
JAMIE TAHANA: What does the president of a conference like this actually do?
KN: The president is on a leadership role. So the role there, for Fiji, would be to increase the ambition of the countries to start further actions in implementing the commitment that was made through the Paris agreement two years ago. So trying to take a level up on the implementing of the commitment that was made and trying to oversee that the world goes towards implementing the reduction efforts on climate change.
JT: It's the president and all, and it is able to have this more ambitious goal, but is it actually possible? We saw how difficult it was to get the agreement in Paris. Is there such a thing as too much ambition, especially when you've got the likes of the United States and China there.
KN: Yes, well realistically speaking as you said, it's a huge goal there for a small country to take on the biggest polluters, but Fiji has an opportunity to set a legacy with the way it decides to proceed with this. Currently, I think Fiji has decided to take on the issue of climate financing, so trying to champion the issue of climate financing as one of the key priorities for the presidency of COP23. And so how does that link up with adaptation works as well is yet to be seen around how Fiji tries to frame itself in the next couple of months.
JT: Oh, OK. So Fiji gets to set the agenda for the conference, basically?
KN: Yes. So it has an option of choosing the focus area that you would like to champion and at the moment Fiji has indicated that climate financing and adaptation financing would be one of the key issues. So how does Fiji take forward that ambition and champion that for the next one year?
JT: And is it doing well in its progress so far? We had the meeting last week, didn't we, where the Pacific countries basically agreed to go into this as a united front. Will that help, in your view?
KN: Yes it does, actually. The regional preparatory meetings that we have, the more contact that we have, it does help the solidarity of the Pacific to prioritise the issues that the Pacific would like to take up to these international meetings and champion as the whole region. One of the things that we are trying to push the Fijian government is to focus this presidency as the 'Pacific COP,' and in doing so we'll shine a light to the Pacific and how do we put the Pacific into the central implementation phase of the global agreements as we go forward.