On Tuesday 26 March 2024, the Australian Institute of Worldwide Affairs NSW welcomed Dr Wesley Morgan to launch Ocean Local weather Coverage: Renewing Australia-Pacific Relations in a Warming World (Melbourne College Press, 2024). The launch was coordinated with the launch at AIIA Qld by Dr Morgan's co-editors Prof Caitlin Byrne and Prof Susan Harris Rimmer from Griffith College. Their work was impressed by the Might-June 2020 version of International Affairs journal Fire Next time. This version centered on local weather change and is titled after the devastating fires in Australia in 2019.
Dr Morgan's observations about Australian overseas coverage on local weather change over the previous few many years drew on his skilled background as a senior fellow on the Local weather Council and a fellow on the Griffith Asia Institute. Dr Morgan identified that the e-book introduced collectively students from Australia and the Pacific Islands within the local weather disaster, local weather and overseas coverage, nationwide safety and regional economies.
Morgan famous that the local weather disaster is difficult the area's strategy to overseas coverage and diplomacy, their ideas of protection and nationwide safety, the partnerships of key allies within the area and Australia's relationships within the Asia-Pacific, together with exports with key buying and selling companions. .
I’ve analyzed the developments which have led to Australia's modern coverage local weather for the Pacific area, together with the institution of the 'Blue Pacific', a multilateral discussion board involving 14 unbiased Pacific island nations. This time period was coined by the Pacific Islands Discussion board in 2017. Most Pacific nations gained independence between the 1960s and 1980s. The results of local weather change in these states have been most recognized within the late 1980s, with measurable will increase within the degree of the ocean for low-lying islands and atolls within the Pacific, and was raised on the Australian-sponsored Convention of Small States in 1989 within the Maldives.
Morgan argued that there was a transparent international stalemate in local weather negotiations within the 2000s, epitomized by the US's 2001 withdrawal from the 1997 Kyoto protocol, which sought to implement the limitation and discount of greenhouse fuel emissions in compliance with agreed particular person nation aims. Notably, Australia didn’t be a part of the framework till 2007. Nonetheless, Pacific island nations introduced local weather change to the UN Safety Council and insisted it was a menace to their sovereignty. Local weather change isn’t any much less a menace to Pacific island nations than weapons and bombs are to Western nations.
Developments within the local weather house continued, evident within the institution of the 2015 Paris Settlement, which requires international locations to decide to lowering emissions by particular dates. Pacific island nations have been distinguished actors on this framework construction, significantly Tony de Brum of the Marshall Islands, who, based on Dr Morgan, fashioned a coalition that grew in most Pacific international locations: this majority helped set up the Settlement.
Quick ahead to right this moment's Australian authorities. International Minister Penny Wong has reiterated Australia's place in supporting Pacific island nations and acknowledged Australia's earlier lack of assist within the area. This was as a consequence of Australia's US-centric strategy to Indo-Pacific overseas and safety coverage. The shift to a extra Pacific focus is obvious by means of Australia's curiosity in bidding for the 2026 COP31 local weather talks and co-hosting it with Pacific nations.
When requested how Australia, regardless of having applied home emissions reductions, would cut back Scope three emissions (to which Australia is a distinguished international contributor), Morgan replied that Australia ought to work with key buying and selling companions, like Japan, within the transition to wash vitality. options, because the local weather minister Bowen had identified.
Report by Jacob Barry, AIIA intern
Dr Wesley Morgan (centre) with AIIA NSW intern Jacob Barry (proper) and AIIA NSW President Ian Lincoln