Voices for the Pacific: The voice of change

Speakers

Kosi Latu, Richard Busby

Introduction

Richard Busby: Malo e lelei, Talofa lava, Kia oranna, and welcome. Welcome, everybody to Voices of the Pacific, in this episode, known as The Change. Today we're joined by the Director General Kosi Latu from the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, otherwise known as SPREP, which is primarily the leading authority on decision making in the Pacific region around climate change and environmental policy.

Kosi Latu is the director general of SPREP, who's also had vast experience both as a state attorney in Samoa and then also as an Economics and Commonwealth Secretariat based in London. So welcome, and thank you for joining us today, Director General.

Kosi Latu: Kia ora and I thank you very much, Richard, for that introduction. It's a pleasure for me to be on this very important discussion this afternoon. Thank you very much, and welcome to everybody who is listening. Thank you.

Richard Busby: Great. So obviously, this is pre-recorded, but I guess we will be getting a lot of comments afterwards, so I hope that you'll stay in touch with us for any further inquiries.

What is SPREP?

But to start off this discussion, I'm wondering if you could set some precedents for us about SPREP. What is SPREP as an organization, and primarily, what does its work revolve around?

Kosi Latu: I think it's important to put things in its sort of broad context. SPREP stands for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program. It is the regional organization that's been mandated by our Pacific leaders to take the lead on environmental matters for the region.

We're an intergovernmental agency, so we comprise of about 26 member countries. That includes about 21 Pacific Island countries and territories.

We have territories of the US and France that are part of the organization as well, and then the rest, which is five Metropolitan countries that include New Zealand, Australia, the UK, France, and the US. It's a mixture of the big countries in the region and the small Pacific Island countries and the territories of the metropolitan countries.

We have been around for more than 40 years. But formally as an intergovernmental agency, we were established in 1993 by treaty. So it's a treaty-based organization.

But prior to that, SPREP has operated as a program of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, or SPC. SPC has been around much, much longer. It was set up soon after the Second World War in 1946 based out of Noumea, New Caledonia.

The membership between SPREP and SPC is very similar with maybe one or two countries that are not part of both organizations. But the rest of the constitution of the members are pretty much the same.

Before we became an independent agency, we were a program of SPC for many years, and that was pre-1991. And before it became a program of the SPC, SPREP started as a coral reef monitoring program way back in the '70s. And it was a one-man band by a man called (inaudible).

He's sometimes referred to as the godfather of SPREP because he was more or less the person who started SPREP, but as a one-man person. But then, of course, the issues relating to environment increased in importance and grew, and it then became a program of SPC before it morphed into an independent agency for the Pacific Region.

Why does SPREP exist? It existed because of the acceleration from a program to an international, independent organization was influenced greatly by the nuclear tests in the Pacific in the 1980s and 1990s especially.

Leaders felt that we needed a specific agency charged with the mandate of promoting cooperation in terms of protecting and managing the environment, but also dealing with issues that had serious implications on the environment, such as nuclear testing and so forth.

We're based in Samoa. We are an organization that is made up of different nationalities. We have Kiwis. We have Australians, Americans, and of course, Pacific Island countries. We are a small organization of about 140 personnel, but our mandate is for the Pacific.

That means we operate right throughout the Pacific region in the areas of climate change, biodiversity, island ecosystems, waste management, and environmental monitoring and governance. So that in brief is what SPREP and a little bit of history. I'm the Director General, as I said, but I'm finishing my term in about four weeks’ time-- end of March.

I've been at the helm of SPREP for about six years as Director General. And prior to that, I was the Deputy Director General. I've been with SPREP for about 12 years.

What is the current state of climate change in the Pacific

Richard Busby: Nice. Thank you for that explanation. I was wondering if you could expand a little bit about the mandate. I guess there is a lot of social uproar about the state of climate change, especially with the coalition of parties or COPs that have become more important recently.

And we definitely want to consider how this is impacting the Pacific Islands. Now, there are definitely a lot of cases that centre around-- say, for example, we talk about 2015 where Vanuatu had to use 60% of its annual GDP just to repair from typhoon seasons and such.

I was wondering if you could give us a brief rundown about the current state of the Pacific Islands around climate change. I guess the biggest one would be sea levels and implications of rising sea levels with islands like Tuvalu and Fiji, et cetera.

Kosi Latu: I think the first thing you've got to look at are the threats of climate change on the Pacific Island countries. I mean, sea level rise is a very real threat to many of our Pacific Island countries. Four out of the six lowest countries in the world are in the Pacific.

You have Tuvalu. You have Kiribati. Most of those countries' highest point is no more than two meters high, so you can imagine a tsunami can completely devastate any of those small island countries in the Pacific.

We saw a little bit of that in Tonga in January where some of the smaller islands within the Tongan group near Tongatapu and near the volcanic eruption were completely wiped out by the tsunami. And the interesting thing is that the tsunami wasn't caused by an earthquake. It was caused by the volcanic eruption.

So, the threats are real, and we're seeing all kinds of things happening. There has been a number of relocations in some of the islands in the Pacific, like in Papua New Guinea, like in Vanuatu. We've seen relocation inland as well in many of our countries, including Fiji, and the Solomons.

That has happened. The threat of climate change is real. It's not an anticipated impact. We are seeing it every day of our lives. It's affecting our communities, affecting our livelihoods. It's affecting our future. For us, it's a matter of survival.

It's affecting food security. We're seeing a greater more and more impact on our coral reefs, which is a very important ecosystem in terms of our survival. Most of our people live around the coastal areas. We're seeing ocean acidification, impact on coral reefs. Many of our coral reefs are not in a good shape at the moment.

And then, of course, you move inland. You look at what's happening inland. There's water inundation of our water supplies because of sea level rising and also moving more and more inland. And so it's very difficult for our people to leave their communities because of the cultural and spiritual attachment to those lands and those places and communities, because that's where they grew up. That's where their ancestors are buried. Those places are places of great cultural significance, and so it's very, very difficult. We have no choice. And so, we're seeing that.

The science is also telling us, Richard, that based on the modelling that SPC has done, that the fisheries in terms of tuna is going to shift in the next few years from the West to the East. And many of the countries depend on fisheries, particularly tuna, for their national income.

Small countries like Kiribati account for about 40% of their GDP from fisheries. Tuvalu, for example, FSM-- a lot of these countries generate national income of a large proportion of that, about 30% or 40%, from fisheries. So, if the tuna is shifting to the West, then that's going to have a major impact on the economies and, of course, their food security and survival and so forth.

So it is really a matter of survival economically and physically, emotionally-- you name it. It's affecting our life in every aspect of the Pacific communities.

Forced relocation and land governance

Richard Busby: Thank you for that. I just also wanted to touch on something that you said earlier, which was about relocation. Another term for this is definitely what we call climate refugees. In terms of forced relocation and devastation to islands, what would be the expectation for things like land governance?

You also touched on their heritage-- spiritual and belonging as well, ancestral land. Is there any way to account for that as well or to avert that sort of disaster?

Kosi Latu: It's a very difficult issue, Richard. I mean, in some cases, we have no choice but to relocate from one island to higher ground, high volcanic islands. That has already happened. We're seeing that in PNG.

SPREP did help with one relocation of an island, a low lying atoll which had a community, to a higher island in 2004, 2005. We're seeing it in the Solomons. So I mean, it's not a matter of choice. We have no choice but to move to higher ground because otherwise, our very existence is threatened.

The importance of land to us-- I've already mentioned that. Culturally, spiritually, so forth-- there's no substitute for land. But what can we do? If the water is coming in, we've got to move to higher land. We have no choice.

It's not just moving from island to island. Even the higher volcanic islands or the higher islands are experiencing inland forced migration. But you raise the issue of sovereignty and so forth. And the thing is that for the small low-lying atolls, the impact is incredible because land generates your exclusive economic zones.

If you've got no land, then theoretically, you've lost your EEZ. That's a matter of legal opinion at the moment. So, if your island, if it's a low-lying atoll and it's submerged by water because of a sea level rise, what is the status of your island? Do you lose your island permanently? Do you lose your exclusive economic zone?

And then there's issues like, do you lose your nationality? Who do you become? There are all these very difficult questions. Does a country cease to be a country? Does a nation cease to lose its sovereignty if there's no land? Because legally, land generates sovereignty, so you've got to have land. If there's no land, then all these very difficult issues come up.

The issue of climate refugees-- well, unfortunately, the Refugee Convention doesn't define refugees to include climate refugees. That's the problem. And I can understand the difficulty that many countries have with that because that means that some are a bit hesitant to take in climate refugees because they might have their own issues in terms of land space and so forth.

We're seeing that with the ongoing issue of refugees in Europe and the Middle East, with thousands and millions of refugees moving from the Middle East to Europe, and even within the Middle East itself. That's a real problem.

But that whole Refugee Convention does not define refugees to include climate refugees. I know that the New Zealand government a couple of years ago had looked at the issue of not necessarily offering climate refugees status, but looking at some way to accommodate some of the people from the Pacific Islands who were being threatened by sea level rise.

I mean, the discussion has started, and it's been around for some time. It's a major legal issue. But at the moment, there's no clear legal solution to the problem of accommodating climate refugees, so it's still a matter of discourse at the moment. But at the same time, islands are growing underwater as we speak.

How much time do we have?

Richard Busby: On that topic as well, I would just like to ask, based on your expertise in the area and with your organization, is there a specific timeline that we have before this happens, before these issues of major islands sinking, loss of sovereignty-- before it becomes so wide scale?

Kosi Latu: That raises a whole range of dimensions, Richard. Now, let me make a comment in the context of the UNFCCC COP26 discussions and debate. SPREP has been involved in every COP since the first COP in 1991, and we've been at every COP since then. We've attended every COP.

The problem for actually trying to come up with a date is this. Just for argument's sake, we say, OK-- and we already know from the science, Richard, that we've got very little time. Time is very short, right?

But if we put a timeline to it, say, for example, we say, oh, 2025 is the point where we would draw the line and say, that's when we're looking at having to relocate people, that's going to have an impact on the negotiations, right? What I mean by that is that there are discussions on adaptation at the moment, so you adapt because of the impact of climate change.

Now, there are countries that are still opposed to the whole discussions and the impact of climate change despite the science. And unfortunately, many of those countries that oppose the issue of climate change as being a real issue are the big countries.

Once you start doing that, they'll then say, well, what's the point of discussing adaptation if you guys are going to go-- I mean, this is a crude way of putting it. If these small island countries are going to go under water, why are we talking about adaptation? It's a waste of money. You see what I mean? It's a very sensitive issue.

We're not trying to put a timeline and say, 2025, that's the end point. We've got to make sure we relocate everybody. We're sensitive to the point that-- particularly in the context of the negotiations. Once you start putting a timeline, then that is going to have a serious impact on the current negotiations, and the big countries that are responsible for emissions who are not very supportive all the time.

There are some who are supportive, but there's a big majority of the big countries that are not supportive of adaptation and providing access to finance to adapt to the adverse impact.

It's going to be very difficult for us as a region to negotiate because they'll just say, well, listen. You've given yourself a timeline. In five years, most of your islands are going to go under water. What's the point of talking about billions of dollars to provide adaptation support to you guys if you're going to go under water? Why don't we look at something else? So there is that problem when you relate it to the COP negotiations.

But let me say this. We have got a very short period of time left, Richard. The focus of the climate change convention, the UNFCCC, is mitigation. That's the core of the problem. We have got to reduce emissions.

And actually, the big countries have got to be ambitious. They have not been very ambitious with what they call the NDCs, nationally determined contributions. Basically, another word for their plans to cut their emissions.

And so, for us, we have a very small window of opportunity to try and keep up with the 1.5 degrees pathway. At the moment, the data that we have based on what the global community have provided for the NDCs is that we're around 2.3, 2.5 degrees increase already.

So we have a major problem with the time, and time is very, very short. The science is very clear about that. We've got to act now. But if we start putting a timeline saying, OK, 2025 is the endpoint, that is going to change the whole nature of the negotiations right now. That's a problem politically. The Pacific are very conscious of that.

We just know that we have a very small window of opportunity. And we're saying to the global community, especially the big countries, we've got to stop this retoric. We've got to stop making these pledges and statements. We've got to see some urgent, bold action, practical action, done on the ground to try and keep us on the 1.5 degrees pathway.

SPREPS input on COP as a whole

Richard Busby: Thank you for bringing that up as well. I guess that will be the next topic that I would love to have a discussion with you. You mentioned that SPREP has been part of the Coalition of Parties or COP since the very first one. Could you give us some context as to the purpose of COP?

I guess in terms of general society, we only think about things like the Paris Accords or big decisions, and we're not very good covering some of the more effective ways that we're tackling climate change in terms of what is actually being done and the specific pledges that seemed to never be followed through.

A core example of this is that leading up to the most recent COP26, it was well known that the Pacific Islands contribute less than 1% of global emissions.

And yet the biggest contributors are places like China and India were absent during the pledges to reduce gas emissions by 2040, 2050, and then came back with their resolutions of aiming for 2070, which is way outside of the margin of what COP26 was about. Could you tell us a little bit about what is being done specifically in the islands based on what COP26 has pledged to do?

Kosi Latu: Yeah. I think there were actually two questions that you raised. You asked, what is COP? Most people don't know about COP. Why is it important, and why is the region involved in that? Why is SPREP involved in that? The second question that relates to all these statements and pledges made by the big countries and the impact of that by not caring through those pledges on the Pacific.

The first point I like to make is that climate change is a global issue. It's not just a national issue, it is a global issue. What people do in one part of the world-- we have seen, and the science has proven-- it will impact other people who are not responsible for it. So to deal with the problem and to come up with solutions, you've got to have a global approach.

And the global approach that was agreed to by the global community in 1990, '91, was to agree on a global convention on climate change. That's the United Nations framework for climate change, the Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC.
Under that framework, it has this conference of the party mechanism, which basically allows the global community who are parties to the Climate Change Convention to come and meet every year to discuss, how do we implement this convention in a way that we're able to avert the adverse impacts of climate change?

They've been having these COPs. They call it a conference of the COPs. COP 1, 2, 3-- now we've had COP26. We're now onto COP27. The reason why these COPs are there is to provide a formal framework to enable the whole of the global community to come together to be able to discuss a global solution because it's a global problem, and that's why you have the COPs.

Some COPs have been more successful than others. The Paris Agreement you mentioned was one of the few more positive successful ones. But a lot of the other COPs have been basically-- I'm afraid to say this, but a talk fest. COP26 had some good achievements, but there were also some disappointments.

For example, the $100 billion that was pledged way back in Copenhagen-- I think it was either 2010 or 2009. $100 billion was pledged by the big countries by the year 2020. Well, that was two years ago, and still $100 billion has not been achieved.

This is what I mean. Even formal decisions that have been made at the COPs have not been adhered to. That's a big big, big disappointment. I mean, the COP26 last year-- I don't know if you remember, at the end, India and China decided to downgrade the language in terms of securing an agreement on coal, and it was a disappointment. At the very end, they decided to come up with this crazy, crazy language that basically diluted and downgraded the intent of that agreement.

There was some disappointments, but there were some good achievements from the Glasgow COP. We saw an agreement to strengthening NDCs, and now NDCs are being reviewed every year instead of every five years where you have the global stock take. We had an agreement on the tripling of adaptation funding.

We had the agreement on the work program for the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement had a work plan agreed in 2015, but we've just agreed on it last year in terms of the details of it. It's taken all this time. These are some achievements that I think you can take from COP26.

But as I mentioned, there's also been disappointments. I can't recall a COP outcome where we've had a 100% achievement on all the issues because it involves negotiations, this give and take. Parties try to meet each other halfway, so you get a solution that has a little bit of this and that for each party but doesn't really quite come up with the solution that they're wanting.

That's the problem with the COP framework. It's a negotiated framework, and so there's no guarantee that you will get what you want. And that's been the major problem for us. The big countries, of course, have influence and great power to wield at these COPs.

But I think the Pacific in the last five, six years have made tremendous inroads in terms of amplifying its voice, making its voice known, and fighting for what it believes is important. So that's where things are in terms of the COP-- there's pros and cons about the process. But that's what is needed for a global solution.

I think your second question was to do with all these pledges, and I think I mentioned this in one of our earlier discussions. We don't want to hear any more pledges. We don't want to hear any more statements because many of these pledges are not aligned to existing policies or legislation that these big countries are making.

Secondly, as I said, we've got experience where they've not actually kept their pledges, like the $100 billion by 2020. So, we don't want to hear any more of these pledges. We want to see urgent action. We want to see them do it urgently and take bold action. They need to be ambitious with their emissions.

They're acting as if we've got another 100 years to go. We don't have them. The cost of not acting now is going to be a lot more than the cost of dealing with the problem later. The cost of dealing with it later is going to be much, much more expensive costly-- not just in terms of finance, in terms of the impact on the lives and the livelihoods of people in their communities.

What should the world be doing as a better commitment?

Richard Busby: Thank you for that. I guess that leads us on to our next question as well. There has definitely been an increase in the pledges to fund. But in all the recent COPs, there's definitely been an underwhelming sense of money that's being sent through in terms of climate adaptation, innovation, reduction of waste and pollution.

One of the things that a lot of the countries-- when we're talking about this negotiating mindset-- is that there's always an economic impact on it as well. Countries stopping coal production, whether it be overseas or domestically, does impact the energy levels and the economy as well.

Could you give us kind of a rundown, due to your extensive background in economics, about economic impacts based on climate change?

Kosi Latu: Yeah. I can talk about a couple of examples. Take China. I mean, China is now the biggest emitter, right? China probably has the most coal-fired stations. But the irony of that is that China is also increasing their efforts in terms of renewable energy.

You have a strange situation where the biggest emitter in the world is not slowing down on coal-fired stations. But at the same time, it's increasing its renewable energy intake in terms of solar and hydro and so forth. Now as to why that's happening, I mean, you can speculate on that.

China has the biggest population in the world-- 1.2, 1.3 billion people. And it has a huge economy, so I suppose it's trying to do both. It could be. I don't know. But that's what's happening.

A lot of countries are now moving into renewable energy. The prices of solar panels is going down, but perhaps not as cheap-- probably not cheap enough for the smaller countries. But it is certainly moving in the right direction.

We'd like to see that shift from fossil fuel to renewable energy continue to increase, but happen in such a magnitude so that the shift from fossil fuel to renewable energy will bring about a transformation on a global scale that will change things.

At the moment, there are still too many coal-fired power stations in India and in China and even some of the Western countries. It's not just India and China. There's some coal power stations in some of the Western countries.

There's still a lot more work than needs to be done. And as I said, we have a small window of opportunity, and the shift to renewable energy-- I know the economic arguments that have been made by some of these big countries. The cost on the economy in terms of shifting is enormous.

It means to have to retrain people in different skills and capacities to align themselves to transition to a low carbon economy type thing. Economic costs for them are high. I mean, of course, there's always going to be economic cost.

But as I said before, if you don't do it now, the economic cost for later on is going to be probably triple if not quadruple in the future. And so I think it's a bit short sighted to say, well, the economic costs are high. No, you've got to look beyond them now.

You've got to look at the next five years, next 10 years, where are you going to be? Where are we going to be as a global community? I think it's important to have that long term perspective immediate, but also medium-long term perspective. You need to pay the costs now.

Otherwise, the costs you're going to have to pay five, 10 years from now, it's going to be-- I don't know. It's going to be enormous. Some countries are just going to be in a position where they're not going to be able to do it. So we're running against time, and that's the concern that I have.

For us, it's a matter of survival. It's not shifting our economies. The region produces 0.03% of the global emissions-- very, very small. But we're already leading by way of example. Many of our countries have roadmaps to get to 100% carbon neutral, and that means a complete shift to our renewable energy by 2024, '25.

Some are almost there. Cook Islands is almost 100%. Tokelau is 100%. There is a major, major change transformation happening in the Pacific region, but we hope that the rest of the world will do likewise because our survival is at risk.

Legislation

Richard Busby: Right. With that as well, one of the greatest questions would be-- because SPREP does write kind of a lot of advisory panels, and they do kind of help in writing legislation-- what would be the best step for all countries?
Not just the Pacific Islands who, I now know, have such a great road map. But what would be the great equalizer in making sure that all countries are, in a way, making a commitment towards lower carbon emissions?

Kosi Latu: As I said, they've got to have a long-term perspective of the issue. If you don't have a long-term perspective of the issue, you're only going to just be focused on now, and that's the problem. Politics comes into play. Governments want to stay in power, so they will have policies that will ensure that people are still employed in the coal industry and so forth.

I mean, this is the reality. Politics dictate the policies of some of these countries, and so it's difficult for them because first and foremost, they're thinking about their political future, not the survival of the global community. And that's the issue.

But as I said, they've got to be brave and take on board the economic costs of shifting to a carbon neutral world. And then you pay less as you move on. Of course, there's always a cost. But the thing is that the longer-- they've been dragging their feet. The longer they drag their feet, the more that build is going to cost them in the future.

There are factors that, I think, act as a constraint on the big countries. I mentioned politics. I mentioned the voter constituency and so forth. Then, of course, they're thinking of jobs in the short term, but they're not thinking of employment in the long term, and they're not thinking of survival.

This is a matter of survival. I mean, what else do you want to know? In the last 12 months, we've seen flooding happening everywhere-- in China, in Europe, even in the States, bushfires everywhere. I mean, what else do you need?

It's right in front of them. It surprises me that they just continue to-- it's like the Titanic. It's sinking, and they're still playing music. It's like Nero. Rome is burning and still fiddling around. Sorry, but that's just how I like to describe the current attitude to the problem at the moment-- very short sighted, unfortunately.

We're placing economic imperative more important than the lives and the survival of people, and unfortunately, that has to change. So, unless there's a coming together of understanding on that issue that this is more than just the economy, this is about us having a future in the next five, 10, 20, 30 years-- unless that happens, it's going to be very, very difficult.

Final remarks

Richard Busby: Thank you for that, Kosi Latu, and thank you for joining us today. Would there be any final thoughts or impressions that you would love to share with us?

Kosi Latu: Yeah. We just had last week a Pacific state post COP26 review. The work continues, Richard. Every week, we're meeting with officials. I've got a meeting of the heads of regional organizations on Friday. We will be discussing that.

It never stops. And it never stops for us in the Pacific. Because as I said, the underlying issue for us is survival. We've got to continue fighting. We can't stop just because the global community, or parts of the global community, are not listening.

We can't. We've got to keep fighting the good fight and keep pursuing what we believe is important for the whole world. Our work doesn't finish after the COPs. There's always the follow up issues, and there are many, many follow up issues from COP26.

In terms of Glasgow, there's a Glasgow framework that we need to look at in terms of follow up. There's a lot of issues that even right now our teams and officials are looking at in terms of preparing for COP27 in Egypt. So, the work continues.

We don't know what else that we need to tell the global community in order to change their minds. We just hope that common sense will prevail. If they're not listening to the science, and the science is saying we need to act now and act urgently, then we're praying and hoping that the common sense will prevail.

Richard Busby: Thank you for that. I guess a lot of the conversation that we've had today has definitely been a little bit of a doom and gloom because the stakes are so high. Everything feels so imperative and so instant. I'm guessing, just based on the work that you do, do you still have an optimistic view and have a lot of hope that the international community will still gather together to make changes?

Kosi Latu: As I said, it's not all of the global community. There's some really, really committed countries. The UK has been an excellent partner for the Pacific region.

They reached out to us, and we had regular discussions at night and during the day for months leading up to COP26. They went out of their way to accommodate the Pacific, and they gave us the space to be able to talk to the presidency. And that's something that hardly happens.

Egypt is the new presidency for COP27. Now of course, the focus is going to be on Africa, so we don't know whether we will have that same level of attention given to Pacific state's issues. And so it really depends who's leading. Some countries are more supportive of us as a region. Some are more focused on their own regional and national issues. It's a very complex issue.

But there are some really, really good countries that are leading by example in terms of policy and action on the ground, and they are they are ones that we're partnering with. We've got to partner with like-minded countries, and you have no choice.

And so we're hoping that a coalition of like-minded countries who are very aware of our issues and are wanting to align with us will increase and will grow. And hopefully, we'll have a platform where we can agree and just move forward together. At the moment, we're kind of moving forward, but there are bits that are dragging their feet, and there are others that are not moving at all. And then there's those who are moving forward. We've got to be on the same-- singing from the same hymn sheet, as it were, in order to have that progress that's needed for us.

The New Zealand government-- in the last couple of weeks, New Zealand made a pledge last year of 1.3 billion climate change funds. And what I know at this point is that New Zealand is committed to 50% of that fund for the Pacific, and SPREP is in their sights.

So, we're having that discussion, and we're hoping that climate change fund that New Zealand has announced last year will really make an impact in terms of many of the things that we've been advocating for. And New Zealand has been a great supporter of SPREP. We've worked very closely in terms of bringing the region together to provide space at the COP. And I wanted to acknowledge that because no other country has done that for the Pacific region.

But I know that now, others are wanting to come on board like Australia and wanting to promote that. So, it's good. There's some very positive things that are happening, and we wanted to acknowledge all the member countries, but also New Zealand for providing that support to SPREP.

We're looking forward to that, to further discussions on how SPREP can play a very important role in terms of that climate change fund New Zealand had announced last year. Thank you.

Richard Busby: We thank you for your time today, Director General. We do hope that you make the most of your last four weeks, and we do hope that the viewers who are watching this and having a look at this could please support the work that is being done to support the Pacific community.

As you all know, this series was based on a collaboration that we've had not just with SPREP, but also with the British High Commission based on the Trouble in Paradise exhibition that we had now, which brought those to light.

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