NADI, Fiji: Pacific climate advocates have issued a clear call to governments ahead of PreCOP31, unveiling five “Red Lines for 1.5°C” through a visual action in Nadi.
PreCOP31 brings together ministers and climate negotiators in Fiji and Tuvalu ahead of COP31, while communities in the Pacific are already experiencing the impacts of climate change that international negotiations seek to address.
The five red lines form part of the Pacific Climate Justice Demands, an annual document that guides regional climate advocacy. The demands are developed through consultations involving a Pacific regional network representing more than 290 organisations.
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The five demands are:
• No false solutions: Reject technologies, policies and financial mechanisms that allow emissions and fossil fuel extraction to continue while shifting the risks and costs onto Pacific communities.
• Phase out fossil fuels: End new oil, gas and coal exploration and extraction, phase out existing fossil fuel production and consumption, and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.
• No extraction without consent: Reject new forms of extraction imposed without genuine free, prior and informed consent, binding benefit-sharing arrangements and independent environmental assessments.
• Protect and defend the living planet: Recognise Pacific peoples as rights-holders and defenders of the ocean, land and biodiversity they have stewarded for generations, as well as legitimate practitioners of environmental governance.
• Do not monetise non-economic loss and damage: Ensure that responses to loss and damage distinguish between payment and reparation and do not reduce Pacific cultures, identities and grief to monetary values.
Jacynta Fa’amau, Pacific Campaigner at 350.org, said the world is likely to breach the 1.5°C threshold within the next decade, making the decisions taken by governments at PreCOP31 and COP31 critical.
“Irreversible loss and damage will occur, and has been occurring over the past decades. But how long we spend above that limit is still within the control of decision makers,” she said.
Fa’amau said the five red lines represent the Pacific’s effort to keep a pathway back to 1.5°C open and urged governments to reflect them in their commitments.
Dr Rufino Varea, Director of the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, said the demands represent the mandate of Pacific civil society at PreCOP31.
“The discussions in Nadi will help shape the priorities and political direction heading into COP31, so this is the moment to make clear what the Pacific expects to see carried forward,” he said.
He said Pacific communities had spent decades highlighting the risks they face and now expect those concerns to be reflected in the PreCOP agenda, political signals and, ultimately, decisions at COP31.
“We will carry these red lines from Nadi to Türkiye, and they will remain our measure of whether the outcomes delivered respond to the scale and urgency of the crisis facing our region,” Varea said.
