This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center
Fourteen years after the Fukushima disaster, Japan is restarting its nuclear reactors – and two wind-blown near-deserted fishing villages on the northern island of Hokkaido could be the destination for all their radioactive waste.
But, while some residents of Suttsu and Kamoenai welcome the government money that volunteering to store the waste will bring, others are fiercely opposed due to fears that the nuclear waste will contaminate their land and water.
The controversy could delay Japan’s goals to use carbon-free nuclear energy to replace electricity generation from expensive imported fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions on the way to net zero by 2050.
Takeshi Kuramochi, a climate policy researcher at the NewClimate Institute, called the nuclear waste issue a “showstopper” for nuclear development. He added that, if Japan fails to meet its nuclear targets, it will likely resort to fossil fuels to fill the gap as the country has been “very slow on implementing renewable energy.”
Japan’s nuclear history
Japan first started using nuclear power to generate electricity in the 1960s and, by the twenty-first century, it was one of the nation’s main energy sources. As the island nation lacks fossil fuels and relies mostly on imports, nuclear power was seen as a path to energy independence as well as to reining in climate change.
But everything changed in 2011 when a powerful earthquake and tsunami disabled the Fukushima nuclear power plant’s cooling systems, causing nuclear fuel in three of its reactors to overheat and melt down, releasing radioactive materials into the air and ocean.
While no one was killed by the nuclear disaster directly, over 150,000 people were evacuated and some severely ill hospital patients did not survive their relocation. All of Japan’s nuclear power stations were shut down while new safety standards were drawn up. Well over a decade on, only 14 of its 54 reactors have been restarted.
Without electricity from these power stations, Japan resorted to increasing its use of gas and coal. While the EU, US and UK all more than halved their coal emissions between 2011 and 2023, Japan’s stayed the same.
But as memories of Fukushima fade for some, and global fossil fuel prices skyrocket, support for nuclear is again growing in Japan. In 2014, polls suggested 16% of Japanese people wanted an immediate phase-out of nuclear power but in 2024 that figure was just 5%.
With this in mind, earlier this year Japan announced a contentious plan to boost nuclear energy in its mix from the current level of 8.5% to 20% by 2040 – back up to its pre-Fukushima levels – as the country strives to realise its net-zero goal by 2050.
Nuclear waste storage
Standing in the way of those ambitions is nuclear energy’s Achilles heel – radioactive waste storage. When used up, the uranium rods that produce nuclear energy need to be disposed of. The spent rods are highly radioactive and hot, so they are usually buried — permanently — deep underground.
Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that, although storing waste is “actually pretty straightforward”, it is also often highly controversial around the world. He emphasised that current technology can prevent leakages of high-level waste after they are put underground, as long as the assessment for a site is done right.
Japan’s waste is currently being stored at an interim facility on its main island in Aomori Prefecture — despite some local opposition. This facility can only house the waste for 50 years and, as of 2023, 80% of its storage space was filled up.
There was a government plan to reprocess the waste to recycle the energy. But a plant designed to do so has been delayed and research took a hit after Fukushima, casting doubt on the technique.
Japan, like other producers of nuclear energy, now has the urgent and challenging task of looking for a site to permanently store such waste.
To convince local governments to volunteer to store it under their land, the Japanese government offered two billion yen ($14 million) to any village that consented to literature surveys of key criteria, including past earthquake records.
If the survey found them suitable, a further seven billion yen ($49 million) would be the reward for entering the four-year second stage of the selection process involving a site study. The last stage, which lasts for 14 years, would see a more detailed assessment with test tunnels and mock facilities, but the amount of subsidy for that has yet to be determined.
The only municipalities through to the second stage so far are two tiny fishing villages in Hokkaido. Suttsu and Kamoenai are both within an hour’s drive of the Tomari nuclear power plant and have ageing populations, as in many of Japan’s rural areas.
Villages of Suttsu and Kamoenai
Climate Home visited both villages in spring and heard that the nuclear waste issue was at the top of people’s minds, although opinions on it differed sharply. Dotted with worn houses along a wavy coastline, the streets of Kamoenai looked grey and were near-deserted. Most residents were tight-lipped about the issue.
At the tourist information centre where she works, Toritani Taeko told Climate Home that “nuclear waste isn’t a big deal, but it has to be safe”. Besides, she said, “it’s set in stone already so no point in opposing”.
Sato Tazunori, a silver-haired sushi chef, said that the two billion yen ($14m) for the first stage helped with the repair of the fishing pier. Living near the Tomari nuclear plant for years has made locals accustomed to staying near nuclear facilities, he added.
But an hour’s drive away in Suttsu, where one of Japan’s first wind farms was built, opinions were more polarised. Electrical store owner Tana Noriyuki said the money helps the village pay for resources like a dormitory for nursing workers and a school.
However, Nobuka Miki, co-chair of a group fighting against nuclear waste and mother to a teenage daughter, said a potential underground disposal site there could harm future generations, while the seafood produced in the village could suffer.
Suttsu’s nuclear fate will effectively be decided in November’s Mayoral elections. The current pro-waste mayor, who declined to speak to Climate Home, is likely to be challenged by anti-waste 41-year-old Shingo Ogushi.
Ogushi came to Suttsu in his early 30s to study the local cherry trout, but in 2020, in order to challenge the mayor’s decision to volunteer for the site study, he quit and intends to run against him in this year’s mayoral election. He told Climate Home that a pier might have to be built to transport nuclear waste to the village. If so, he said this could disturb the marine ecosystem and the fishing industry.
Pro-nuclear voices argue that more needs to be done to win public support for nuclear energy and nuclear waste, while critics argue the technology should be dropped – at least in earthquake-prone Japan.
Indigenous rights: Ainu people
Nuclear waste storage is also controversial among the Indigenous people of Hokkaido – the Ainu. Although there are no current Ainu communities in either of the two villages and less than 20,000 Ainu on the whole of Hokkaido, they were the almost sole inhabitants of the island until the Japanese took over in the 19th century.
ann-elise iewallen, a professor at the University of California specialising in indigenous and environmental rights said that, because of the lack of Ainu consent for nuclear waste storage on Hokkaido, Japan is engaging ini “energy colonialism”.
iewallen – who decapitalises her name as a gesture towards resisting hierarchy – warned of the risk that “part of Hokkaido can be carved out as a kind of nuclear extractive zone”.
The names Suttsu and Kamoenai come from the Ainu language, according to Hiroshi Maruyama, director of Japan’s Centre for Environmental and Minority Policy Studies. Ainu people “feel closer to the land than Japanese settlers”, he added.
Fumio Kimura, an Ainu activist in Hokkaido, said that “any nuclear waste on our land is horrible and our right to the land shouldn’t be neglected”. “Japanese people robbed our land, so why can’t we voice it out?” she asked.
Ainu musician Oki Kano told Climate Home that nuclear waste is regarded as “poison” in Ainu’s philosophy, which seeks a balance between human and nature.
But Kazuaki Kaizawa, secretary general of the government-funded Ainu Association of Hokkaido, said that while nuclear energy and other modern technologies are traditionally regarded as unnatural in Ainu philosophy, those principles can not be fully applied in the modern world. He added that, as Hokkaido has been part of Japan for over a hundred years, Indigenous land rights are no longer practical.
In 2007, Japan was among the 143 countries that voted in favour of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. The declaration states that governments shall “take effective measures” to “ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous people without their free, prior and informed consent.”
But the declaration is non-binding and Japanese law does not currently recognise the Ainu peoples’ rights to Hokkaido’s land, although a court case over salmon fishing rights may change this.
A way forward
Takatoshi Imada, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology who has published research on public opinion of the nuclear waste system, said that, to avoid the division seen in Suttsu, an organisation outside of government should select 20 or so sites and engage their communities in “deliberative dialogue” to win their support for waste storage.
But New Climate Institute’s Kuramochi said that finding a storage site far away from people will be next to impossible in Japan – and that nuclear energy should not be relied on as legal battles, local opposition and safety inspections will slow down its deployment.
“There’s a huge risk of spending so much money on nuclear and nothing coming out of it at the end,” he said. “If you are betting on nuclear, then that means they are not committing fully to this more fully modernised grid network that can accommodate a large amount of renewables”. That, he added, “delays the whole transition of the entire electricity system.”
Buongiorno argues the opposite, saying that nuclear can provide the around-the-clock clean power that solar and wind – when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow – cannot. Therefore, he said nuclear power enables a clean renewables-based electric grid.
Nobuyuki Kawashima, spokesperson for Japan’s nuclear waste authority NUMO, agreed, telling Climate Home that nuclear power “will lead to both ensuring a stable supply and decarbonisation”. “Final disposal needs to be carried out step by step, with the understanding of the public,” Kawashima added.
Translator Zhao Yang contributed to this report. A version of this story was co-published with Japan Times
The post Nuclear comeback? Japan’s plans to restart reactors hit resistance over radioactive waste appeared first on Climate Home News.
Nuclear comeback? Japan’s plans to restart reactors hit resistance over radioactive waste
Gill Einhorn is head of the Forest Future Alliance and Natalie Çilem is community lead of the Global Wildfire Leadership Network.
Wildfires have devastated communities across the world this summer, claiming lives, displacing thousands of people and leaving billions in economic damage in their wake. In Europe alone, wildfires have already caused an estimated €19 billion in losses this year.
They are an economic, financial and public health challenge that is growing faster than many governments and markets are prepared for – and exposing the real costs of poor land management.
A system built for recovery, not resilience
Far more money is currently spent responding to the disastrous effects of wildfires than preventing them in the first place. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that more than half of wildfire-related spending goes towards response, while planning receives only around 0.2 percent. This problem is not limited to wildfires; over 95 percent of disaster aid between 2005 and 2017 was allocated to response, and less than 4 percent was directed towards prevention or preparedness.
Forests are critical, but without investment in how land is managed and protected, their value is neither stable nor guaranteed. Protecting forests requires investing not only in conservation, but in the conditions that keep forests standing.
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Each dollar invested in wildfire-resistant construction could save around $210 in avoided future economic losses, according to a report by the World Economic Forum and Forest Future Alliance. Despite this evidence that prevention can significantly reduce future costs, wildfire resilience remains chronically underfunded.
This spending discrepancy is creating significant challenges for insurers, asset owners and financial institutions. Global insured losses from natural catastrophes reached $107 billion in 2025, with wildfires, floods and storms accounting for 92 percent of claims.
In this context, insurers are reassessing where and how they are willing to underwrite risk. Around 56 percent of global wildfire losses between 2000 and 2023 were uninsured. In some high-risk areas, insurers are scaling back coverage altogether, leaving homeowners, businesses and governments to shoulder a growing share of the costs – making it increasingly difficult to break even.
Proven solutions are already paying off
In many regions, wildfires are driven not by natural causes but by the deliberate clearing of land for agriculture. Degraded landscapes are becoming drier, more flammable and increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic loss, creating a vicious cycle of deforestation, economic damage and rising emissions.
The answer is not simply stronger firefighting capacity. Governments, investors and businesses must work together to shift capital upstream into prevention, resilience and long-term landscape stewardship of healthy forests. That means planting appropriately, investing in heat-resistant species, exploring approaches that minimise fire footprints through active management, and exploring the AI and technology solutions that are burgeoning.
Solutions to this already exist and are proven to have an impact. Following devastating wildfires year-on-year, Portugal shifted its approach to wildfire management, increasing prevention spending within its national rural fire management system from around 20 percent in 2017 to approximately 60 percent in 2022. While many countries remain locked in a reactive cycle of disaster response, public policy can shift investment upstream and make resilience a priority before fires occur.
Indigenous communities have long used proactive land stewardship to reduce wildfire risk while supporting healthy and productive landscapes. For example, the Cheslatta Carrier Nation in British Columbia traditionally managed fuels through cultural fire practices but now implements mechanised fuel removal methods under commercial agreements. By combining Indigenous stewardship with sustainable forest management, Cheslatta is generating community benefits while also boosting wildfire prevention.
Resilience can also be strengthened through finance and technology. FireSat, a partnership led by Earth Fire Alliance with Google.org, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Muon, is a satellite constellation designed for rapid wildfire detection. Scanning every 20 minutes, it can detect fires 400 times smaller than current systems and track them through smoke and darkness in almost real time. In California alone, FireSat could prevent up to 350,000 acres from burning each year. It has recently received significant new investments allowing it to expand towards a constellation of more than 50 satellites that will monitor every point on Earth every 20 minutes or less.
In Brazil’s Pantanal, the Embrace the Forest initiative uses AI-powered detection towers across 2.5 million hectares to support earlier intervention and faster response. During the severe 2024 fire season, the initiative contributed to a 40 percent reduction in burned area compared to 2020.
These examples illustrate what is possible when resilience is treated as an investment priority rather than a recovery cost. But we must ensure funding for these measures is scaled before disaster strikes. Initiatives like the Global Wildfire Leadership Network (GWLN) are key, bringing together corporate decision-makers, investors, insurers, governments and Indigenous leaders to direct investment towards prevention and align finance, technology and stewardship to protect nature, safeguard communities and strengthen future economic stability. With a goal of doing more together than the sum of our parts, the network focuses on Forest Future Alliance GWLN Solutions Labs – where partners sign up with the intent to collaborate.
Rewarding prevention
Financial incentives must be created that reward prevention. This can be done by scaling public-private partnerships, supporting long-term landscape stewardship, investing in community capacity including Indigenous wisdom and technology. Ultimately, our terrestrial natural reserves are critical infrastructure that support resilient economies and thriving communities.
One in three people are dependent on forest services, goods and economic opportunities for survival, so it’s in all our interests to protect what we have. Forests support cooling, water and food security – and are a very cost-effective way of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, where done appropriately.
UN chief warns climate crisis “in overdrive” as El Niño threatens to fuel the fire
No sector can solve this challenge alone. The benefits of wildfire resilience are shared across communities, governments, insurers, investors, utilities and businesses. A single intervention can protect homes and livelihoods, reduce insurance claims, secure water supplies and lower future public costs. Because the benefits are shared, the solutions must be too. Coalitions of actors can take proven approaches further than any one individual or organisation could alone.
As wildfires continue to burn at an unprecedented scale, the opportunity now is to roll out solutions, shift investment upstream and build a future where resilience, rather than recovery, becomes the foundation of thriving economies.
The post From firefighting to future-proofing: Preventing wildfires must be the priority appeared first on Climate Home News.
From firefighting to future-proofing: Preventing wildfires must be the priority
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and the second-largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide (CO2).
Methane traps heat in the atmosphere more efficiently than CO2, but has a significantly shorter lifespan, fading after just a few decades.
Therefore, reducing emissions of methane – a gas primarily produced by agriculture, fossil fuels and waste management – is a powerful option for limiting global warming in the near-term.
Yet climate strategies and models often only focus on CO2, or combine all greenhouse gases into one metric known as “CO2 equivalent”.
The latter approach makes reducing methane emissions dependent on modelling choices and assumptions about the “equivalence” of methane and CO2.
It hides the opportunities and challenges linked to methane’s high warming and short lifetime.
In a new study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, we offer a different perspective that “decouples” CO2 and methane reduction and takes global warming limits as a starting point for determining the required level of methane cuts.
We show that, even under the most ambitious existing national net-zero targets, an absence of methane reduction leads to peak warming that exceeds 1.85C above pre-industrial levels.
The study highlights that, to limit peak warming to well-below 2C, net-zero CO2 targets must be complemented by stringent methane emissions cuts.
CO2 equivalent
How much methane corresponds to one tonne of CO2?
The question is as difficult to answer as: ‘how much spaghetti equals a chicken?’ You could compare the two meals according to their calories, protein content or cost. Each metric can be convenient, but is only valid for that specific comparison – no amount of spaghetti is the same as a chicken.
The same is true for the conversion of emissions of methane and other gases to CO2-equivalent emissions. It can be convenient, as it allows different gases to be compared or combined into a single number. This is why the metric is used in climate targets or evaluating the effectiveness of different mitigation options.
But, because methane and CO2 have different atmospheric lifetimes and warming properties, any conversion is only valid for a chosen time horizon and a chosen baseline.
Depending on the assumptions baked into calculations, methane mitigation can either appear as an immediate priority or framed as almost unnecessary.
There are a number of metrics that scientists use to convert greenhouse gases – whether methane, hydrofluorocarbons or nitrous oxide – into CO2-equivalent emissions:
- “GWP20” measures how much heat a greenhouse gas traps in the atmosphere over a 20-year period, relative to CO2. It emphasises urgent methane mitigation but has been criticised for its implicit discounting of future damages.
- “GWP100” looks at a 100-year timeline. It gives more weight to long-term warming and is used in “integrated assessment models” (IAMs) used by scientists, national emission reporting to the UN and by the GHG Protocol used by companies.
- “GWP*” considers the rate of emissions, rather than warming over a fixed time horizon. Under GWP*, very limited methane reductions bring CO2-equivalent emissions to zero, meaning remaining methane emissions can be designated as causing “no additional warming”. (This interpretation remains controversial as it assumes the continuation of historical levels of warming.)
IAMs are the tools used to generate future emissions scenarios. Because they combine CO2 and methane emissions, the impact of methane emission cuts alone is difficult to isolate in existing emission scenarios.
IAM-generated scenarios also assume mitigation decisions driven by costs. Combinations of CO2 and methane emission pathways that are not purely cost-effective are, therefore, not represented, even though climate policy is messy and emission pathways are rarely cost-effective in the real world.
Only a few countries – including Japan, Mexico and South Korea – specify methane mitigation targets.
A different approach
In our study, we separate CO2 and methane emissions and treat them as independent.
Instead of choosing a conversion method, we suggest that states and organisations set a limit on peak global warming first, then, based on their existing net-zero targets, determine the minimum compatible methane reduction target.
Companies and countries around the world have set net-zero targets focused on CO2, as well as those that include all greenhouse gases. As a result, our research looks at the necessary methane reductions for both types of goal. We consider scenarios where companies or countries deliver linear – in other words, steady – emissions reductions to reach net-zero.
Using a simple climate model, we systematically combined methane and CO2 (or greenhouse gas) mitigation pathways starting in 2025 and calculated peak warming.
The figure below shows how peak warming depends on both the year of reaching net-zero CO2 and the level of methane cuts.
The blue arrows in the figure show that to limit warming to 1.7C under a 2050 net-zero CO2 scenario, methane emissions would need to fall by at least 69% by 2050, relative to 2020.
Our research also finds that, if an organisation or country’s 2050 net zero-target covers all greenhouse gases, its methane emissions would need to fall by 63% instead.
However, under current policies, methane emissions are expected to increase by around 20% by 2050, relative to 2020. We find that this pathway would result in peak warming above 2C by 2050 – even if global CO2 emissions were to reach net-zero by that date (see purple bar on the right-hand side of the figure above).
The figure also shows how, if methane emissions remained at 2020 levels and net-zero CO2 was delivered by 2040 or later, warming would exceed 1.85C. This level of warming is above what has been argued as consistent with the Paris Agreement’s “well-below” 2C limit.
Conversely, cutting methane emissions by around one-third – in line with the Global Methane Pledge target for 2030 – could reduce peak warming by 0.15C, of which 0.05C could be delivered by interventions that come at no net cost. These are shown by the orange and red bars, respectively, on the figure above.
The table below highlights the minimum compatible methane cuts for three different peak warming levels and net-zero CO2 or greenhouse-gas emission targets.
| Peak warming | Year of net-zero CO2 emissions | Year of net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions | ||||
| 2050 | 2060 | 2100 | 2050 | 2060 | 2100 | |
| 1.7C | -69% | – | – | -63% | – | – |
| 1.8C | -32% | -56% | – | -11% | -47% | – |
| 2C | +8% | -8% | -83% | >50% | +33% | -78% |
Minimum methane emission reductions between 2020 and the year of net-zero emissions, consistent with peak warming of 1.7C, 1.8C, and 2.0C at 50% likelihood, assuming linear emission trajectories. For some net-zero targets and peak warming levels, there are no compatible methane mitigation targets (indicated by “–”).
Remaining carbon budget
The global carbon budget refers to the amount of cumulative CO2 emissions allowable while still meeting a particular global warming threshold.
The 2021 climate science report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a 2023 Nature study estimated that, by 2025, the remaining carbon budget for holding warming to 2C would be around 1,000-1,150bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2).
We find that these estimates are founded on the assumption of methane reductions of 27-35% by 2050, relative to a 2020 baseline. (A 2024 Communications Earth & Environment study reached similar conclusions.)
Under the GWP* metric, where methane emissions are only cut to maintain “no additional warming”, the remaining carbon budget would be constrained. The best estimate of a 2C budget shrinks by around 30% to approximately 750GtCO2.
Finally, if methane emissions are not cut at all in the future, our findings suggest that the remaining carbon budget for 1.7C of global warming has, in effect, already been exhausted.
Our analysis shows how peak warming depends on both CO2 and methane reduction – and how methane-specific targets can help refine existing net-zero targets.
Crucially, we show that complementing net-zero CO2 targets with stringent methane cuts is necessary to limit peak warming to well-below 2C.
Weber, K. et al. (2026) Limiting warming by CO2 and methane mitigation in an expanded scenario space, Communications Earth & Environment, doi:10.1038/s43247-026-03832-1
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The post Guest post: Why tough methane cuts are crucial for keeping warming ‘well-below’ 2C appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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Climate Change
Pacific Islands Forum leaders, Albanese must not lose focus on Pacific priorities of climate and ocean
KOROR, PALAU, Monday 31 August 2026 — As Pacific leaders gather for the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Palau from today, Greenpeace Australia Pacific is urging Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to stand with Pacific family by keeping Pacific needs at the heart of negotiations, backing longstanding Pacific leadership, supporting Pacific energy sovereignty and ocean custodianship, and holding the line on 1.5°C.
Against the backdrop of tense geopolitical turmoil, increasingly frequent and lethal extreme weather disasters, the threat of deep sea mining and an energy crisis driven by fossil fuel dependence, the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting (PIFLM) is a critical moment for Pacific nations to unite with Pacific needs central to regional dialogue.
The climate crisis, security, the opportunities of renewable energy in the Pacific, ocean protection, and the shifting political landscape will be the focus of the Forum’s discussions.
Speaking from Palau, Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“The Pacific Islands Forum is the most important multilateral forum in our region, unifying the Pacific under increasingly turbulent global circumstances. We are urging Forum members, including Australia, to not lose focus of Pacific priorities of climate and oceans amid noise and external pressures at this year’s meeting.
“It is very clear that the greatest security threat to our region is climate change and the only way we can address that is through a just transition away from fossil fuels. Regional cooperation is an antidote to climate chaos and geopolitical tension – together, our region can be guided by Pacific nations’ legacy of leadership from the frontlines of the climate crisis, as we build a more peaceful and secure world.
“This year’s Forum will set the stage as we build momentum toward COP31 and a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. Australia must back Pacific energy sovereignty as a solution to the compounding threats facing our region, including soaring costs of living and increasingly lethal extreme weather disasters, and resist the militarisation of our oceans, deep sea mining, and power politics.
“We must not lose sight of what is needed. The regional adoption of Pacific-led solutions, a Pacific pre-COP with focus on advancing the just transition away from fossil fuels and community-targeted finance for strong and resilient futures beyond fossil fuels must be the foundations of this year’s Forum discussion. What we need now is stronger political will.”
Also in Palau, Dr Simon Bradshaw, COP31 Lead and climate expert at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“Prime Minister Albanese faces a major test of Australia’s climate credibility and Pacific partnership this week. We cannot be a friend to the Pacific and continue to expand fossil fuel production. The best way for Australia to remain the Pacific’s security partner of choice is to act faster on the Pacific’s number one security concern — climate change.
“The Albanese Government has approved at least five new coal and gas projects since the last Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, and 36 since being elected, every one of which increases the threats to life, security and sovereignty facing Pacific communities.
“Nowhere in the world are the dangers of fossil fuels or the benefits of renewable energy clearer than in the Pacific, which faces the double blow of climate disasters and expensive fuel imports.
“Australia, as incoming President of Negotiations for COP31, has a responsibility to follow the Pacific’s lead, embrace the vision of a resilient Fossil Fuel Free Pacific, and do everything possible to keep 1.5°C alive. Doing so would establish Australia as a highly effective middle power, a force for good in troubled times, and a true ally and partner to the Pacific.”
—ENDS—
Greenpeace Australia Pacific has delegates from the Pacific and Australia at the PIFLM in Palau available for interview
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