The Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) participated in the final day of the Sydney Climate Action Week, on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and had the privilege of listening to Indigenous and First Nations stories, learning from their wisdom.
PICAN is a regional network with more than 190 members and four national nodes – Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Solomon Islands. For more than a decade, we have fought for climate justice, securing significant wins. In the Pacific, we say: We are. We are one. One organism.
A crisis of compounding harm
We are resilient people. Anyone from the islands knows this. As we saw in the animation on the First Law, we are used to weathering storms, navigating them, using them, even flourishing through them. But the stressors we face today are different, and there are limits to our resilience. These limits are being reached and exceeded. They are felt as harm – multi-dimensional, multi-generational harm.
Take one example of sudden onset, high-impact harm which shows the difference in how Pacific States are impacted by tropical cyclones compared to developed countries like Australia which just experienced the ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred this month. Vanuatu has faced relentless disasters, caught in a near-constant cycle of recovery. In 2020, Tropical Cyclone Harold (Category 5) struck during the pandemic, causing losses equivalent to 61% of the country’s GDP. The country had barely begun rebuilding when, in March 2023, it was hit by two consecutive Category 4 cyclones, affecting 80% of the population. Later that year came Tropical Cyclone Lola (Category 5).
Each disaster compounds the last – on top of exogenous shocks, economic crises, and the ongoing impacts of La Niña. The social and knowledge systems that have held and serviced our communities for generations are struggling to keep up.
This is continued, complex harm. And the communities that bear the brunt of it — those with limited services, infrastructure, and support — are the most vulnerable. Women, girls, and diverse gender identities are at greater risk. This is not singular. This is not just Vanuatu. It is happening across our islands, across the developing world, and right here – to First Nations and Pasifika communities in Australia.
And yet, when we go to global climate negotiations, and ask for what we need, when we fight for what is right, the unrelenting, uncompromising position of Australia, alongside other developed countries, is to say no. And then turn around and claim that they have our small island states priorities in mind. No, they do not.
No more fossil fuel expansion – A just phaseout is non-negotiable
In a world shrinking inward, while those made vulnerable by climate change face losses that are priceless — losses that threaten human rights, the rights of non-human species, cultures, and ecosystems — we need to be relentless and innovative about justice.
But we also need to be real about the facts. Our carbon budget is pretty much gone. All climate negotiations from this point forward should be actively focused on the rapid, just, and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels – not at some vague future date with aspirational implementation pathways, but now.
There are bigger conversations to be had about the root causes of this crisis – colonialism, capitalism, and the unrelenting pursuit of growth at any cost. These forces have not given us a safe future. They have not respected human rights, the rights of non-human species, or the deep connection between people and nature that has sustained us for millennia.
But the alternatives exist. They are well-developed, often ancient — the wisdom of First Nations people, Indigenous knowledge systems, faith-based movements, and models like Reweaving the Ecological Mat from the Pacific.
Pacific leadership in climate action
The threats we face seek to erase our identity and displace us entirely. But we have always been leaders. We have always been solution-focused.
Many Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) are members of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance.
Many PSIDS were the first to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
PSIDS are pushing for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining – rejecting untested and highly dangerous technologies like solar radiation management, false solutions, and an overweighted reliance on market mechanisms and carbon capture and storage.
PSIDS are fighting for justice for non-human species and are seeking international recognition of the crime of ecocide.
Our youth led the charge to take climate change to the International Court of Justice, seeking an advisory opinion that can change the scale and urgency of ambition guided by international law.
We refuse to accept that 1.5 degrees C is no longer feasible. It is. We have the solutions for a climate just world for all, we just lack the political will.
COP31 – A test of Australia’s commitment
COP23 was the first Small Islands COP. Led by Fiji, it was called the People’s COP — because of the Pacific’s unrelenting leadership — delivering tangible decisions that were implemented for the people. This included the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples’ Platform, the Gender Action Plan, the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture, the first COP to have significant movement on health, and the Talanoa Dialogue which set the stage for the first ever Global Stocktake, the Paris Agreements ambition ratcheting mechanism.
But our leadership did not start or stop there. We have continued to be the voice of justice and continued to hold the line against the tide of environmental degradation and harm that our species is inflicting on our one common planet.
The potential hosting of COP31 by Australia is not a bid with the Pacific; this is not possible according to the Rules of Procedure of the UNFCCC. The Host Country Agreement is a legally binding agreement between the secretariat and a single host country. The Pacific is not here to legitimise Australia’s lack of ambition and inaction in meeting its climate obligations, nor to endorse a business opportunity. But COP31 can be an opportunity for meaningful leadership – for Pacific leaders, Pacific people, and critically, for First Nations and Pacifica communities.
It must also be a moment of reckoning for Australia. A country that profits from fossil fuels while claiming climate leadership must be held accountable. If Australia wants to host COP31 in partnership with the Pacific, it must commit to a fossil fuel phaseout and be held to the highest standards of climate justice.
The Pacific Islands Forum has already set the goal of a Fossil Fuel-Free Pacific and committed to transition away from coal, oil and gas in line with the science and 1.5 degrees C – Australia, as a key player in the region, is part of that conversation whether it acknowledges it or not.
The COPs from now onwards — especially given the failure of the last few — cannot continue to be the circus they have become. They must return to the roots of multilateralism, to participatory justice, to real solutions.
No more delays. No more excuses.
So to summarise, our expectation now — for COP30, COP31, and beyond — is clear:
An end to fossil fuel expansion.
Climate justice.
Intergenerational justice.
As it has always been.
Change at this scale and speed is always uncomfortable. But change is the only constant. And change, when it comes, catapults us forward. We cannot get stuck in the moment. Take the long fight. But win it today.
This is an edited version of a speech given at the Sydney Climate Week (The People’s COP: Taking Local Climate Action to the World through COP31 and Beyond | Official CAW.SYD.25 Closing Session)
Sindra Sharma
Dr Sindra Sharma is the International Policy Lead at the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN). She has a background in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics and international development. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics. Hailing from Fiji, her work has always centred on climate justice with a focus on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and developing countries.