Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Pacific Small Island States urge Forum attention on climate adaptation

Posted at 10:30 on 04 August, 2009 UTC

Pacific Island small islands states are taking a strong message to the Pacific Islands Forum on climate change.

The Smaller Islands States, Cook Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu have met in Cairns ahead of tomorrow’s official opening of the Pacific Islands Forum.

The chair of the meeting, Niue’s premier Toke Talagi, says they recognise developed countries, like Australia and New Zealand have their own issues in dealing with climate change.

“The small island states have agreed this morning that we must make a very strong stance with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. It’s taking a stance that’s already been taken by the OASIS countries, which I understand is 45 percent of greenhouse gas reduction by 2020.”

Toke Talagi say there is also need to coordinate access to funds for small islands states to use for adaptation measures.

He says there is a lot of funding for climate change programmes around, the problem is coordinating between them.

“There is a need for us to work on a matrix to enable us to determine exactly what funds are available and what we can use from which donor and so on, and that’s what the secretary-general and his secretariat will be working on.”

Toke Talagi says once they have determined what available, and who can access it, then they can begin to discuss what more is needed.