Climate Change and Environmental Law in the Pacific Islands Region

This essay explores the impact of global climate change on the Pacific Islands, focusing on governmental policies and approaches to address the challenges. It highlights the vulnerability of these islands to extreme weather events, coastal erosion, and water shortages, emphasizing the dependence of local communities on natural resources. The discussion covers the initiatives taken by Pacific Island governments, including those proposed at the 23rd Climate Change Conference, to promote sustainable development and climatic balance. It further analyzes key principles of environmental laws, implementation challenges, and the need for adaptive strategies, including financial support and community engagement. The essay advocates for translating scientific information into local languages and integrating gender dimensions into adaptation policies. It concludes by recommending viable and sustainable adaptation measures tailored to the specific conditions of the Pacific Islands, emphasizing community involvement and long-term resource management, and encouraging correspondence between atmosphere researchers and social scientists.

Running head: REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
Name of Student
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Executive Summary:
The purpose of this assignment is to look into the effects of the global climatic change in the
Pacific Islands. The primary focus is to study how the governments are making policies to
deal with the problem. The discussion will also propose a recommended brief for a
government policy. Lastly, a recommendation and conclusion is provided to summarise the
key points of the discussion.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
Discussion:.................................................................................................................................3
The effects of Global Climate Change in the Pacific Islands:...............................................3
The approach to the Climate change:.....................................................................................4
Effects of Global Climatic Change:.......................................................................................5
A Sustainable approach:.........................................................................................................6
Recommendation and Conclusion:............................................................................................9
Reference:................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction:
The Pacific Islands are most vulnerable to the climate changes that have been
affecting the islands for the last 150 years. The global climatic changes has been affecting
these islands with extreme weather incidents such as tropical storms, hurricanes, floods and
tsunamis. One of the primary effect of these climatic changes has been coastal soil erosion
and shortages of drinking water. The livelihood of the local inhabitants have been highly
affected as they are primarily dependent on the natural resources for their survival, and these
natural resources are getting highly affected by the effects of climate change (Bell et al.
2013). However, Fiji and the other Pacific Islands are determined to face the challenge and
address it with the required measures. In the 23rd Climate Change Conference, held in
November 2017, Fiji and the other Pacific Islands discussed and proposed several ideas and
measures which highlighted their commitment towards the sustainable development of the
environment and achieving climatic balance (Cop23 2018). The purpose of this discussion is
to determine that how the Pacific Island governments are addressing the climate change
issues. The discussion will also include the analysis of the key principles of the different
environmental laws and the different challenges of implementing these laws.
Discussion:
The effects of Global Climate Change in the Pacific Islands:
The present day scenario of the global climatic conditions shows that the Pacific
islands are in imminent danger from several environmental factors. The ocean poses the
primary threat for these islands as it is showing an aggressive nature towards the coastal
erosion (Connell 2015). The damage of the natural resources and the massive destruction by
the tropical storms have been increasing in the last century. This has jeopardised the Island
governments who have long considered the ocean as their primary source of prosperity.

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However, as this traditional belief seems to be obsolete considering the present scenario, the
new governments of the Pacific Islands seems to have a modern approach towards the
sustainable development of the environment. The young Islanders have a more practical and
realistic approach which searches the new drivers, technical processes and how their states
have progressed in the recent years.
Huge number of the anticipated effects of environmental change on Pacific Islands
and their networks are presently unavoidable, making some level of basic adaptation
(Uncclearn.org 2018). Inside the islands, adaptive limit contrasts with the accessibility of
financial and institutional assets. Educated and auspicious reactions are essential, particularly
on low-lying islands and atolls, to enhance the islands' flexibility towards the difficulties
postured by environmental change.
Extra research, observation, a maintained evaluation process, and open commitment
in the improvement and sharing of helpful data will upgrade Pacific Islanders' capacity to
address the atmospheric challenges they face. A few local coordination endeavours are
encouraging information gathering, examination, and access to data, which adds to
noteworthy advance in creating adjustment designs and approaches (Unfccc.int 2018). Local
correspondence and joint effort gives a solid establishment to progressing endeavours to
assemble versatility even with challenges from an evolving atmosphere.
The approach to the Climate change:
The program bolsters the provincial associations the Secretariat of the Pacific
Community (SPC), the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), and the Secretariat of the
Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP), in enhancing their data bundles, warning
administrations and preparing openings on the subject of environmental change. It informs
the administrations with respect to the island states on creating arrangements and techniques

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to get key areas of the economy ready for the foreseen atmosphere related occasions. As
environmental change impacts on all areas including farming, tourism, fisheries, water and
wellbeing, the accomplices are assessing existing improvement designs and framing rules for
their atmosphere flexibility, and altering them in the likewise manner. The program centres
around earthbound and marine assets, and on the training, vitality and tourism parts. In Fiji,
the program underpins experts and inhabitants in woods protection (REDD+ measures).
Atmosphere adjustment exercises are completed at network level in all nations. These
embrace multidisciplinary and incorporated methodologies that include a few accomplices.
The Pacific Islands might be the planet's most helpless countries to the impacts of
environmental change, with some confronting conceivable annihilation. Pacific Island
pioneers meeting at the Pacific Islands Development Forum summit on 4 September 2015
issued the Suva Declaration, an invocation to the world to make firmer move on
environmental change. In particular, the pioneers said that the standard that would be
inevitably embraced in Paris soon thereafter should focus on restricting an Earth-wide global
warming to 2 C as global warming is never right for the survival of the Pacific Small Island⁰
Developing States and called for worldwide responsibilities which would highlight the need
for constraining warming to underneath 1.5 C above pre-mechanical levels (⁰ Cop23 2018).
Effects of Global Climatic Change:
The Pacific Islands as of now confront a distinct reality. Approximately 1,700
occupants of Papua New Guinea and Carteret Island's aggregate 2,500 tenants have been
named the world's first ecological displaced people; moreover, 20,000 Marshallese refugees
emigrated to the U.S. because of these outrageous climate conditions (Farbotko and Lazrus
2012). Cyclone Pam, which bursted through Vanuatu in March 2015, rendered 75 thousand
inhabitants homeless. Cyclone Winston in February 2016, the most exceedingly terrible
tropical storm to ever hit the Southern Hemisphere, ended the lives of 44 people. By 2050,

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the World Bank assumes that rising ocean tides and expanding storm floods will swallow half
of Bikenibeu, a Kiribati settlement which is the residence of 6,500 individuals (Donner and
Webber 2014). The human, social, ecological and financial expenses of inaction or deficient
activity are inadmissible, however the Pacific Island states are advancing with plans went for
adjusting and making more prominent versatility to environmental change.
From actualizing national activity designs, to pushing for worldwide decreases in
carbon outflows, the Pacific Islands are bracing themselves against an evolving atmosphere,
and leading the pack to lift the issue on the universal stage. Islands have joined the Climate
Vulnerable Forum; have sanctioned universal environmental change agreements, similar to
the Paris Climate Change Agreement; and broadly back the ideas to constrain temperature
ascend from an unnatural weather change to 1.5° Celsius (Walsh, McInnes and McBride
2012).
A Sustainable approach:
Financing, notwithstanding, remains a steady obstacle for these little countries to
source capital expected to secure their helpless populaces. Till date, helps from the private
area, territorial associations and universal accomplices has empowered the Pacific Islands to
start creating economic measures to adjust to environmental change for the time being, and at
the same time getting ready for the most terrible times yet to come.
The disappointment of numerous activities in the course of recent years proposed to
create and manage viable adjustment to environmental change can be credited in vast part to
the confusion of the pathways of natural choice making. Ignorance about how to convey
logical objectives around environmental change successfully to Pacific Island individuals can
prove to be devastating (Keener 2013). For the future, it is basic that such blunders are not

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rehashed for successfully conveying environmental change issues to individuals in this locale
is winding up day by day all the more squeezing.
To energize responsibility for change, particularly the adjustment of motivation, by
Pacific Island individuals, at national and international levels, it is important to interpret data
about the science and effects of environmental change into suitable vernacular dialects
(Lazrus 2012). Interpretation in this setting does not just mean deciphering words but rather
additionally guaranteeing that the ideas are adequately imparted; for instance, the expression
"environmental change adjustment" is one that numerous second dialect speakers’ battle to
grasp, yet it is something that Pacific Island individuals have been doing without caring for
ages. Notwithstanding interpretation, proper social roads of correspondence must be used for
discourses of environmental change. These incorporate fitting social settings and also
different systems to empower, particularly at the local level.
One of these techniques, attempted and tried in a Pacific Island, is participatory
network chance evaluation. A comparable approach is Participatory Learning and Action
(PLA), which has additionally been effectively trialled in Pacific Islands’ circumstance
(Betzold 2015). The fundamental approach of both is to draw in communities that are
encountering issues with ecological administration, maybe representing reducing
nourishment assets or faecal contamination of water sources, and encourage the recognizable
proof of arrangements by key individuals from those communities. Logical data is offered to
the locals to help advise their choice about which of the few conceivable arrangements is to
be received, however since the motivation behind such techniques is to guarantee supported
community purchase from a specific arrangement, it is important that pariah learning isn't
forced on community basic leadership, at any rate without unprompted welcome.

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The gender measurements of environmental change in the Pacific Islands have just as
of late been recognized as imperative. Plainly, if such mindfulness is calculated in to
adjustment strategies, then the communities are probably going to be more powerful and
supportable than they are in some way or another. However the consciousness of gender roles
and the craving to expand gender awareness among Pacific Island people must be done in
socially proper ways on the off chance that it is to be effective and not risked creating a
reaction from networks. There should be an increase in the correspondence between
atmosphere researchers and social researchers for the Pacific islands region (McNaught,
Warrick and Cooper 2014). Few atmosphere researchers, mindful of the idea of future
atmosphere projections and their effects on physical conditions, are discussing successfully
with social researchers, who see better the presumable impacts of these projections on
individuals in this area. Enhanced correspondence between the two types of researcher would
be an initial step to more viable commitment of key partnership in the locale, both in
governments and as agents of common society.
Given the experiences of the recent past, it is conceivable to issue a few suggestions
that are considered viable and supportable to the anticipated environmental change in the
Pacific Islands area. It focuses on what is proposed by compelling and supportable
adjustment. Adjustment must be viable as in it is the correct answer for the specific parts of
environmental change that a country or community wishes to adjust to. For instance, it is not
one or the other essentially enough to uncritically transpose versatile arrangements neither
from a mainland to an island nation nor from a modern or backward nation (McMillen et al.
2014). Such versatile arrangements must be custom fitted to the specific condition. They
should likewise be outlined such that neighbourhood partners purchase in to their execution
and see how they are relied upon to settle specific problems. Adaptation should likewise be
economical as in Pacific Island governments and nearby communities must have the capacity

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to maintain versatile answers for a long time to come (Nunn et al. 2014). This necessitates
such communities fathom these arrangements and that they have the assets which may be
money related, material and human to manage them indefinitely. For example, fake shoreline
structures might be unduly costly for a subsistence community to keep up while a replanted
mangrove woods along the beach front periphery would not be much costly.
It is most likely that worldwide help will keep on flowing into the Pacific Islands
throughout the following couple of decades to help endorse the expenses of environmental
change adjustment. A portion of this guide will be reciprocal, spilling out of one nation to
another. Some will be for the area all in all, coordinated to a great extent through territorial
offices or global bodies, for example, the GEF. The last guide will incorporate numerous
conventional streams yet additionally far bigger entireties through activities like the Global
Adaptation Fund.
Recommendation and Conclusion:
With a pattern towards expanded regionalism in the Pacific Islands, the time is ready
for provincial offices to be contributed with a more prominent intensity of self-assurance,
enabling them to create proactive motivation, especially around environmental change.
Outside financing of their centre spending plans which would enable them to expect a
leadership part for the conditions of the Pacific island countries and wind up free from
attention on recent objectives. For whatever length of time that these local organizations stay
subordinate to part governments, they will keep on being generally receptive, furthermore, in
creating and actualizing long haul and practical versatile strategies. For the reasons of
ecological administration to environmental change, local organizations ought to be urged to
think past political limits more than they do. There are numerous shared characteristics
among island composes and conditions inside the locale that rise above political outskirts.

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Local organizations ought to developing new ways to deal with viable and practical
adjustment to atmosphere change. National governments must themselves contemplate their
parts in environmental change adjustment for their constituents. These administrations must
be urged to think long haul and their natives must be viably connected with the goal that they
comprehend what governments may need to do.

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Reference:
Bell, J.D., Ganachaud, A., Gehrke, P.C., Griffiths, S.P., Hobday, A.J., Hoegh-Guldberg, O.,
Johnson, J.E., Le Borgne, R., Lehodey, P., Lough, J.M. and Matear, R.J., 2013. Mixed
responses of tropical Pacific fisheries and aquaculture to climate change. Nature Climate
Change, 3(6), p.591.
Betzold, C., 2015. Adapting to climate change in small island developing states. Climatic
Change, 133(3), pp.481-489.
Connell, J., 2015. Vulnerable Islands: climate change, tectonic change, and changing
livelihoods in the Western Pacific. the contemporary pacific, 27(1), pp.1-36.
Cop23 2018. The Pacific Islands - Cop23. [online] Cop23. Available at:
https://cop23.com.fj/fiji-and-the-pacific/pacific-islands/ [Accessed 21 Aug. 2018].
Donner, S.D. and Webber, S., 2014. Obstacles to climate change adaptation decisions: a case
study of sea-level rise and coastal protection measures in Kiribati. Sustainability science,
9(3), pp.331-345.
Farbotko, C. and Lazrus, H., 2012. The first climate refugees? Contesting global narratives of
climate change in Tuvalu. Global Environmental Change, 22(2), pp.382-390.
Keener, V., 2013. Climate change and pacific islands: indicators and impacts: report for the
2012 pacific islands regional climate assessment. Island press.
Lazrus, H., 2012. Sea change: island communities and climate change. Annual Review of
Anthropology, 41.
McMillen, H.L., Ticktin, T., Friedlander, A., Jupiter, S.D., Thaman, R., Campbell, J.,
Veitayaki, J., Giambelluca, T., Nihmei, S., Rupeni, E. and Apis-Overhoff, L., 2014. Small