Climate Change in the South Pacific: Impacts and Responses in Australia, New Zealand, and Small Island States

The idea for this book grew out of the Ecopolitics conference in Canberra, Australia in 1996. The conference captured the ferment of the climate change debate in the South Pacific, as well as some its potential implications for the region’s inhabitants and ecosystems. At that conference, one of the editors (Gillespie) delivered a paper on climate change issues in the region, as did Ros Taplin and Mark Diesendorf, who are also contributors to this volume.

Concern over the potential impacts of future climate change on both natural and human systems drives research into the enhanced greenhouse effect. There are two fundamental questions that need to be addressed by this research: whether atmospheric pollution currently being emitted, and likely to be emitted in the coming decades, will result in dangerous climate-related impacts for future generations, and if so, what action should be taken to limit that danger.

Australia has proved to be something of an unknown quantity in the international climate change policy process. Having adopted a pro-active stand at Rio in 1992 during the Conference of the Parties process, it subsequently displayed an unwillingness to accept legally binding targets and timetables and advocated the merits of a ‘differentiated’ approach. The concept of differentiation is grounded in the belief that each nation-state should bear commensurate losses of economic welfare in the pursuit of greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. Although Australia has been criticised internationally for this approach,¹ it formed the basis of the agreement reached at the Kyoto Conference of the Parties in December 1997. This chapter undertakes an historical overview of the policy responses of the Federal government in Australia from 1985 – 1995 in order to shed some light upon this position. It will be argued that while grounded in the policy discourse of ecological modernisation, Australia’s policy approach has failed to overcome some of the significant contradictions that this discourse tries to address. This analysis calls into question not only the potential for Australia to act on any outcomes achieved at Kyoto, but also the ability of the ‘ecological modernisation’ approach to resolve such contradictions.

In the period leading up to the Kyoto Conference in December 1997, the Australian Government took an increasingly intransigent stance in negotiations to tackle the problem of global climate change. While claiming that he recognised that climate change is a reality and that nations must take measures to reduce emissions, the Prime Minister, Mr. Howard, stated publicly that Australia should never have signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).¹

The Australian government is a signatory to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), which has the ultimate objective of “… stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system…” Since the present rate of change in global average temperature appears to be greater than any natural changes observed over the past 150,000 years, this objective may require stabilisation of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations at present levels in carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalents, or lower levels. According to the calculations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this would require a reduction in annual global CO₂ emissions by at least 60 per cent and substantial reductions in the other GHGs as well.

Australia was one of the earliest ratifiers of the Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. However, in the years since then, there has been slow progress in Australia reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. In 1997, Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Committee published the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: 1995. The results show that in 1995, excluding the land use sector, Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions had increased by 6 per cent above 1990 levels and that in the energy sector, emissions had risen by 8.2 per cent above 1990 levels (see Table 1). According to another Australian government publication, Australia’s CO₂ emissions from the energy sector were estimated to be 11 per cent above 1990 levels in 1995–1996 and without further measures, they could rise to 40 per cent above 1990 levels by 2010.¹

On 28 April 1997 on ABC Radio National, the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, stated publicly that he believed that Australia should never have signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). This was the culmination of over a year of backpedaling by the Australian Liberal-National Party Government on the issue of climate change due to purported negative economic impacts. Climate change has been a difficult issue for Australia in international circles, in particular, because Australia has been viewed in the past as an exemplary international environmental citizen. From the 1970s onwards, Australia made significant contributions to protection of the global environment, including in the areas of nature conservation, whaling, ozone layer protection and conservation of Antarctica. Australia’s current stance on climate change is a radical departure.

The unspoken tragedy of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (FCCC) Third Conference of the Parties (COP3) in Kyoto was the implications for the Pacific. The demands of New Zealand’s neighbouring nations, along with other small island states, for strong international reduction targets for C0₂ emissions were categorically disregarded in the thick of international realpolitik. This allowed New Zealand and Australia to walk away from Kyoto without any greenhouse gas reduction targets at all. Ironically, both countries in the early years of the decade had stated clearly, along with Pacific Island leaders at the South Pacific Forum, that climate change was the greatest threat to the South Pacific region.¹ Seven years later, New Zealand and Australia agreed to do less than the United States, the 15 members of the European Union, 10 Central and Eastern European countries, Canada and Japan.

New Zealand (NZ) has the fourth highest per capita emissions (on a cumulative basis) on the planet. However, NZ does not have to make the average 5% cuts in greenhouse gases that most other Annex I countries have to make following Kyoto. Moreover, with the current way the Kyoto Protocol is structured, it is possible that positive economic impacts will result for NZ. These benefits will be achieved with minimum disturbance of the market as it currently operates. Although this may be ‘good’ for NZ, it may also be highly counterproductive to achieving a solution to what may be the biggest environmental problem to face the planet in the next century.

Plants remove carbon from the air by the process of photosynthesis and retain this in the form of wood. Half the dry weight of wood is elemental carbon. Land that supports a forest cover will hold considerably more carbon than land that does not, even if the forest is managed for production and parts are being felled and replanted at any particular time. The high carbon-density (tonnes of carbon per hectare) of forests is their primary contribution to the mitigation of global warming.

Joint Implementation (JI) is the process whereby a Government or private entity from one country invests in an emission-reducing project in another country and claims credit for the emission reductions. This chapter will focus on the ‘pure’ form of JI in which a developed country invests in a project located in a developing country.

The projected increase in global mean surface temperatures of 1.3°-4.0° C by the year 2100¹ will constitute “a change, although gradual, unparalleled in recent millennia.”² While most nations may suffer deleterious consequences from climate change,³ small island states⁴ may face the most dire and immediate consequences. This chapter will focus on the possible impacts of climate change on Pacific Island Developing Countries (PIDCs)⁵ and the prospects for averting these impacts under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The water lapped at the shore with timeless repetition; the insects sang in unison from the trees that clung to the cliff like moss to a wall. A seagull circled on silent wings and headed out to sea. A crab scuttled over rocks and sought refuge in a small pool, iridescent in the evening light. A fish leaped from the sea and then, with a splash, returned to its coral world. The palm trees swayed gently in the breeze as the sun dipped below the horizon, signalling the end of another perfect day.

Regional and national manifestations of global climate change and accelerated sea level rise are a continuing and growing concern of the small island developing states (SIDS) of the Pacific.¹ For the Pacific island states, this concern is evinced in the technical reports prepared by the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP)² and other regional intergovernmental organizations, and from the communiques issued by the South Pacific Forum and other political bodies.

In the Pacific islands, the total mangrove area is about 343,735 ha, with largest areas in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji and New Caledonia. A total of 34 species of mangroves are found in the region, as well as 3 hybrids. These are of the Indo-Malayan assemblage (with one exception), and decline in diversity from west to east across the Pacific, reaching a limit at American Samoa. Mangrove resources are traditionally exploited in the Pacific islands, for construction and fuel wood, herbal medicines, and the gathering of crabs and fish.

There are two main environmental settings for mangroves in the Pacific, deltaic and estuarine mangroves of high islands, and embayment, lagoon and reef flat mangroves of low islands. It is indicated from past analogues that their close relationship with sea-level height renders these mangrove swamps particularly vulnerable to disruption by sea-level rise. Stratigraphie records of Pacific island mangrove ecosystems during sea-level changes of the Holocene Period demonstrate that low islands mangroves can keep up with a sea-level rise of up to 12 cm per 100 years. Mangroves of high islands can keep up with rates of sea-level rates of up to 45 cm per 100 years, depending on the supply of fluvial sediment. When the rate of sea-level rise exceeds the rate of accretion, mangroves experience problems of substrate erosion, inundation stress and increased salinity.

Rise in temperature and the direct effects of increased CO₂ levels are likely to increase mangrove productivity, change phenological patterns (such as the timing of flowering and fruiting), and expand the ranges of mangroves into higher latitudes.

Pacific island mangroves are expected to demonstrate a sensitive response to the predicted rise in sea level. A regional monitoring system is needed to provide data on ecosystem changes in productivity, species composition and sedimentation. This has been the intention of a number of programs, but none has yet been implemented.