Fiji has done its part in the fight against climate change by pushing for the first international accord to include the 1.5-degree threshold in the Suva Declaration in 2015 and committing to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, says Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.
“At COP21, in a fury of forceful negotiations in Paris, France, the 1.5-degree guardrail was written into the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Fiji has since done our part — legally empowering ourselves to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 through our recently passed Climate Change Act,” he said at a COP26 briefing in Glasgow, Scotland this week.
“But too few countries have joined us.
“Six years post-Paris, we are on track for 2.7 degrees of warming — a hellish future that will spare no nation.
“To demand the action we need, the world’s climate champions are marching to Glasgow to the mantra of ‘keep 1.5 alive’; — a battle cry first uttered here, in the Pacific.”