Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has urged major multilateral corporations that operate beyond the scale of their entire countries to work with the Pacific.
Mr Bainimarama made the remark while delivering the opening remarks on Day 2 of the Sustainable Innovation Forum along the margins of COP26.
He said nations like Fiji were not only in the front line of climate impacts but also in the front line of systematic change.
“We face the type of urgency and imperative to act that have always been ingredients in the recipe for great innovation,” Mr Bainimarama said.
“We are the laboratories of the future and we are aggressively seeking opportunities to enlist the private sector, leverage additional resources, and drive expertise into solutions that can be scaled up to create global and generational good,” he said.
He also reiterated Fiji’s commitment to a renewable energy revolution stating Fiji’s net-zero ambition is legally empowered by the recently-passed Climate Change Act 2021 and plans have been clearly stated on building Fiji’s climate resilience, including harnessing nature.
He said that Fiji needed bold and courageous partners.
“Corporates who claim to be focused on sustainability should not strive for the bare minimum. Too often, I see so-called sustainability officers and executives guarding their corporate interests, not from climate impacts like the rising seas, but rather from the shifting tides of public opinion.
“Other leaders – real leaders – are bold. They are pioneers of this new frontier, they see the future markets, future profits, and the future of their businesses, and they will reap the greatest rewards from this steady but certainly inevitable transformation.
“We know that correcting course will be the single largest and most complex effort mounted in modern history but we’ve also seen how it can become our single greatest opportunity, for jobs, for innovation, and for gains in wellbeing.”
Mr Bainimarama concluded his remarks stating across Fiji’s 330 islands, there was no shortage of projects or objectives on which Fiji could partner to deliver nor were there limits on the potential of what the future held.
Fiji is open for investment, for innovation and to all the ingenuity the participants of the Sustainable Innovation Forum will unleash, he says.
