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The village Naviavia, which has just been bought from Fiji by Kiribati to ensure that Kiribati islanders have a place to go when the sea level overcomes their islands (Jonas Gratzer/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The question is no longer simply whether environmental ambition can be agreed, but whether it can be sustained.
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The Pacific is where climate leadership will be made – or lostThe Pacific is where climate leadership will be made – or lost
In the lead-up to COP31 this year, global climate diplomacy faces a credibility test – and it is unfolding in the Pacific.
Across much of the world, fossil fuel concerns have reasserted themselves. Rising energy costs, security anxieties, and domestic pressures are reshaping national priorities particularly in the context of global energy volatility linked to geopolitical fragmentation and oil market shocks.
In recent weeks, climate leadership risks have been framed as conditional – something to be advanced when circumstances allow – raising deeper questions of climate justice. In this context, climate leadership is not judged by ambition alone, but by whether commitments hold under pressure.
For Pacific Island countries, climate change is not a future scenario to be managed, but an existential threat. Climate justice is not only about historical responsibility or differential capacity – it is about the consistency of commitment. It asks whether those with the greatest capacity to act will do so even when it becomes politically or economically difficult.
This tension – between conditional ambition and lived urgency – now sits at the centre of global climate governance. The question is no longer simply whether ambition can be agreed, but whether it can be sustained.
Annual climate talks are often criticised as overly procedural, slow to translate pledges into tangible outcomes, and disconnected from the communities most affected by climate change. Negotiations remain highly centralised among state actors, while Indigenous peoples, women, and youth are frequently sidelined from meaningful participation. At the same time, accountability mechanisms for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and climate finance remain weak, contributing to a growing gap between commitment and delivery. Scholars have long argued that the procedural architecture of COP has struggled to keep pace with escalating climate urgency.
These critiques are not new. But they are becoming more urgent.
For some states, delay is not a matter of strategy but of survival.
At COP30 in Belém, Brazil’s presidency signalled a shift – calling for a move from negotiation to implementation. The Global Mutirão reaffirmed ambition but also exposed the difficulty of operationalising it within existing structures. Without mechanisms that accelerate delivery, embed accountability, and reflect lived realities, ambition risks dissipating into process.
This is where the Pacific pre-COP talks, struck as part of a compromise that ended the contest between Australia and Türkiye for COP31 hosting rights, take on significance.
At its most basic level, a pre-COP is a preparatory forum. But in the current context, it offers something more: a practical opportunity to prototype reform. Not by replacing the COP system, but by complementing it – testing more integrated, inclusive, and outcome-oriented approaches that could be scaled into the formal process. The Pacific is well positioned to become the site where several of these reform directions are advanced in practice
Delegations at a ministerial dialogue on climate finance during COP30 (Kiara Worth/UN Climate Change)
First, there is a need to shift from negotiation to action-oriented platforms. When Island states are already suffering from the impacts of a changing climate, global acknowledgment and responsibility must amount to more than declarations. Rather than centring exclusively on text-based agreements, climate processes must increasingly focus on delivery mechanisms – particularly in areas such as adaptation finance, ocean protection and resilience, and renewable energy transitions. A Pacific pre-COP could help demonstrate how regional platforms can accelerate implementation in ways that formal negotiations alone cannot.
Second, inclusivity must move beyond rhetoric. Embedding Indigenous and First Nations knowledge, gender equity, and youth leadership into governance structures is not simply a normative goal – it is essential to ensuring that climate responses are grounded in local realities. A pre-COP designed with these principles at its core could model a more legitimate and representative form of climate governance.
Third, accountability requires strengthening. The absence of robust mechanisms to track NDC progress and climate finance flows continues to undermine trust. Developing transparent monitoring tools – including public dashboards and independent review processes – would help bridge the gap between pledge and performance.
Finally, hybrid governance models offer a way forward. Combining multilateral negotiations with smaller, issue-specific coalitions could enable more rapid progress in key sectors. In areas such as ocean governance, adaptation, and energy transition, minilateral partnerships could complement the broader COP framework, delivering tangible outcomes while maintaining alignment with global goals.
The Pacific pre-COP provides a space to test these approaches. It also challenges the emerging framing as fossil fuel concerns regain focus that climate leadership is somehow conditional. The Pacific perspective underscores that for some states, delay is not a matter of strategy but of survival. The question is not whether the COP system can accommodate this urgency, but whether it can evolve to reflect it.
For Australia, this is a moment of both opportunity and consequence.
As a pre-COP31 partner to the region, it is well placed to help shape and support this agenda. Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen – who has built strong relationships and respect across the Pacific, and who currently represents the President of Negotiations role for COP31 hosted by Türkiye – is in a unique position to help lead the kind of reform that critics of the COP process have long called for. If Australia is genuine in its commitment to elevating Pacific voices, it must move beyond partnership in principle to alignment in practice, and embrace its place within the Pacific region, not apart from it.
It requires showing that global tensions between fossil fuel dependence and climate ambition do not preclude progress, and that even within a constrained environment, governance systems can adapt, priorities can be clarified, and commitments can be made more actionable.
If successful, the Pacific pre-COP could do more than prepare the ground for COP31. It could help redefine what effective climate cooperation looks like in practice. In a system under increasing strain, that may be its most important contribution.
About the author
Larelle Bossi
Dr Larelle Bossi is an ocean ethicist working on values-led ocean governance, with a focus on the Pacific and global ocean policy.
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