PM Matthew Wale urges major emitters to cut emissions and calls for accessible, vulnerability-based climate finance.
Prime Minister Matthew Wale told Pacific Pre-COP31 leaders that the world is on track to overshoot 1.5°C calling on major emitters to make deep, economy-wide cuts now.
He said global action has lacked the decisiveness and ambition the moment demands.
Addressing the Leaders’ Plenary in Nadi this week, Prime Minister Wale said 31 years of negotiations and 10 years of the Paris Agreement have not delivered its core goal.
“COP31 cannot be another talkfest,” Prime Minister Wale said.
He urged G7 partners to lift ambition in line with their historical responsibility and called on BRICS and major emerging economies to lead on emission reductions.
He said fossil fuel subsidies, estimated by the IMF at US$7.43 trillion, remain outside climate negotiations and are more than three times total global climate finance of US$2.1 trillion in 2025.
“We are paying to fuel the overshoot,” he said.
On finance, he said the shortfall is a matter of priorities.
“Global military spending reached nearly US$2.9 trillion last year, more than 16 times official development assistance, even as aid fell by almost a quarter.”
“The shortfall in what reaches us is not because the world lacks money. It is because it lacks political will,” he said.
The Prime Minister called for climate finance to be grant-based, demand-driven and delivered through national systems.
He urged partners, multilateral development banks and climate funds to use the Multi-Dimensional Vulnerability Index in deciding access.
“Finance must follow vulnerability,” he said.
He also called for published disbursement timelines and independent tracking of pledges against delivery, full capitalisation of the Pacific-led Pacific Resilience Facility and a strong third replenishment of the Green Climate Fund.
SOURCE// OPMC PRESS RELEASE
