NZ public to MPs: Protect our Pacific from climate change

Surrounded by traditional drumming, dancing, flags and signs with the names of all the Pacific Island countries on them, concerned citizens came to Parliament steps today to deliver the ‘Protect our Pacific’ petition to MPs. The petition calls on the New Zealand Government to take stronger action on climate change.

Speaking at the event were Co-Leader of the Green Party, Metiria Turei, Labour’s Climate Change Spokesperson Charles Chauvel, and Nicky Wagner from the National Party, along with Oxfam’s Senior Policy Advisor Sarah Meads, Pacific Island youth organiser Luana Bosanquet-Heays and Samoan Matai Aiono Mino Cleverley.

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The event was organised in coordination with Oxfam, which is delivering its Wave of Change climate petition to Government this week as well.
“The New Zealand public is concerned. We have deep connections with the Pacific,” said Meads. “The Islands are on the front lines of climate change, which is a problem that they played almost no part in creating.

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In the lead up to the UN climate change conference in Cancun later this month, international development agency Oxfam is calling on New Zealand’s negotiators to move beyond mere talk and platitudes supporting the establishment of a new Global Climate Fund that allows poor communities to cope with climate change. Additionally, rich countries including New Zealand must live up to their commitments made in the Copenhagen Accord to deliver US$30 billion of fast start climate financing, which is new and additional to existing development aid, to the vulnerable people who need it most.

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“People in the Pacific are already struggling with serious food shortages, salination of their drinking water and higher kind tides that sometimes wash all the way over the top of their islands. We owe it to these people to help.

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“This is not aid and money should not come from existing aid budgets. It is wrong to take money away from schools and hospitals to pay for stronger sea walls. This is about justice. New Zealand has around the fifth highest greenhouse gas emissions per capita out of the industrialised nations. It’s time for developed countries to face up to their responsibilities for causing this problem.

“We’re here today to send New Zealand’s representatives off to the UN meeting with a message: Protect our Pacific,” said Meads.

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