Despite a Pacific charm offensive, the Albanese Government’s COP31 campaign risks collapse as First Nations voices remain excluded, writes David Paull.
WHETHER OR NOT Australia hosts the COP31 round next year is still up in the air, with a strong bid from Türkiye to be settled.
Nevertheless, the Australian Department of Climate Change is pursuing a confidence trick in the Pacific and leaving Australian Indigenous voices behind. I talked to Polly Cutmore, a leading First Nation advocate for reducing Australia’s carbon emissions.
There has been considerable conjecture about the final decision regarding COP31 and its destination in Adelaide. UN climate chief Simon Stiell recently urged Australia and Türkiye to sort it out “very quickly”. But Australia is digging in and now pushing hard for the event to come down under, with PM Albanese expected to seek a meeting with Türkiye’s President Erdogan.
The charm offensive from Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen in the Pacific is part of the strategy to secure support for Australia’s bid for COP31. However, another key issue was foremost on the Australian Government’s mind — keeping China at bay.
Sceptics may say this was top of the list of concerns (we are the U.S.’s deputy dog after all), but the Australians have used the pressing issue of rising sea levels to assure the Pacific that we are very concerned with the threat to their survival. Implicit is the decision by the Albanese Government to put the interests of the Pacific front and centre for COP31.
The biggest problem is, of course, that emissions in Australia continue to rise; nothing describes the Australian reluctance to rein them in than the recent approval of Woodside’s North West Shelf carbon bomb and the list of approvals for coal and gas projects, which don’t seem to be getting smaller. Rather, the inverse is true. Pacific leaders would also be aware that fugitive emissions are under-reported.
As Vanuatu's Climate Change and Energy Minister, Ralph Regenvanu, pointed out, Australia is now legally obliged to follow international law and Pacific leaders are uneasy about Australia’s decision to grant approval for Woodside’s massive expansion in Western Australia.
The charm offensive to get the Pacific leaders on board and involved with COP31 has been repeated by NGOs that have a financial interest in attending the COPs and representing the interests of Indigenous people, with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) being the lead organisation in this regard.
At a recent meeting in Fiji to discuss options for COP31 in Australia, the view of putting the Pacific front and centre was also expressed by WWF CEO Dermot O’Gorman and backed by several other Australian ENGOs in attendance.
The meeting called for:
“...strong mitigation, an exit from fossil fuels, a just transition and investment in loss and damage, adaptation and climate migration. The real challenge lies in how this advocacy happens and who gets heard.”
In the end, the leaders of the Pacific Nations have decided to get behind Australia's bid for a Pacific COP as leaders hope to not only amplify the urgency of the climate crisis but also to ensure that global decision-making reflects the lived realities of frontline communities across the Pacific.
But can the Pacific take the Australian Government’s reassurances seriously? Mr Albanese said categorically that Australia will ‘make decisions in its own interests’ despite calls from Pacific leaders to wind back its reliance on coal and gas.
Australia has its own ways to make the carbon balance work, mainly through the discredited system of carbon offsets, particularly as the carbon capture and storage and the sequestration through Land Use Change options have run dry. The offset ruse, by all accounts, will not deliver as an acceptable pathway, but this is precisely the road the Australian Government proposes.
And what of the interests of the Indigenous people of Australia? Their voice has been left out of the international climate debate. But so have Indigenous people from around the world who find there is just not the space for non-government actors at these forums. Chris Bowen has even sounded out the Australian intention to scale back the total attendance at COP31.
Polly Cutmore, who went to the COP29 gathering in Baku last year, claimed that there were over 100 government workers and university professionals at the Australian pavilion. The few Indigenous people present were representing those interests. There has never been a strong Indigenous community voice at COP from Australia, a voice that expresses the concerns of Indigenous people here.
The Indigenous Peoples’ Organisation is supposed to represent Indigenous people from around the Pacific, but only takes a few reps from Australia. The IPO has consistently distributed government funds to a few Pacific and PNG groups, and has neglected support for representation and input from the First Nations of New Zealand and Australia.
As The Conversation stated:
‘The incentives and expectations for public servants currently reward controlling issues rather than providing the right support for innovative practice.’
WWF, which backs the IPO, set up a “troika” between Brazil, Pacific and Australia to represent Indigenous people at COP, but with little consultation with actual Indigenous groups. Like the Government and other NGOs, the top-down approach seems to be the way to go, as consulting with communities appears to be just too hard.
Cutmore, an Australian Indigenous Elder who went to the WWF-sponsored gathering in Fiji in July, found it was attended by only six Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) representatives out of a total meeting of about 100 people, including non-Indigenous groups. The intention to put the Pacific interest front and centre for COP 31 was clearly stated, though of course, Indigenous support for the event next year by Indigenous people in Australia is certainly not assured, given the Government’s poor record of allowing increasing emissions and destruction of country.
The impacts of climate change are not restricted to the Pacific. Heatwaves and fire, droughts and river death are at the top of the list in Australia. First People are more exposed to suffering the adverse impacts of climate change, given their lower socio-economic status and their greater reliance on the natural environment directly for their medicine, food and water.
Australia is also bound by other oceans, the Southern, the Indian, the Gulf and the Timor Sea. All areas of Australia are susceptible to sea level rise, although the public wouldn’t know it. Even the Torres Strait Islanders, whose islands are just as threatened by sea level rise as the Pacific, have received little assistance or time from the Australian Government or even a voice at these forums.
As Polly Cutmore stated:
“Our people are more prone to the effects of climate change because of colonisation. You can’t have climate justice without land and water justice for First Nations. We are the solution.”
The country clearly has a moral obligation, no matter how seriously it takes it.
But the Australian Government just prefers not to deal with Indigenous communities or listen to their views. This was made clear in the recent Voice Referendum, where many parts of Australia received virtually no engagement or truth-telling. Now it seems accommodating First Nation views is just a bit too hard. Senator Malarndirri MaCarthy is facing a massive job to turn this around.
Reflecting her frustration at the lack of interest the Australian Government shows for its own Indigenous people, Polly Cutmore says:
“Maybe we should be talking to foreign countries to support us. It may be, we’ll be at COP31 if it comes here, but we’ll be the ones sitting out the front protesting, letting the world know how the Australian Government can’t be trusted on climate change and doesn’t care for its own people, let alone the Pacific.”
David Paull is an Australian ecologist and blogger on politics and the environment.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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