For the past three years, Australia has been pushing to host the COP31 climate talks in 2026 alongside its Pacific neighbours, who are increasingly threatened by rising sea levels and climate-fueled disasters.
As a young person who has just returned from COP30 and worked with young people in the Pacific, I have grown tired of hearing platitudes and jargon about climate change without much discussion of what is already at stake, especially for young people.
Now that Australia has lost its bid to host COP31, Minister Bowen needs to show the Pacific that Australia is still serious about its commitment to the region, especially to young people facing increasingly uncertain futures, who remain at the front lines of the climate crisis.
We know that entire coastal nations such as Tuvalu and Kiribati are facing the prospect of being underwater by the end of my lifetime. It makes sense for COP31 to centre Pacific voices to lead the global agenda on climate change, because they can raise global ambition.
When it comes to climate change, the Pacific has always led international discussions — both inside the halls of COP and far beyond them — acting as a moral compass for global climate action. Yet COP talks have continued to sideline their voices. Many hoped that co-hosting COP31 would help steer the process back to what it’s ultimately about and deliver real climate outcomes.
But the one bright spot from Australia’s backdown is that part of the deal was that Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, will become COP31 “president of negotiations,” placing him as lead negotiator of the most crucial climate talks in the world.
That means he has an opportunity and a responsibility to centre Pacific voices and ensure meaningful outcomes for communities on the frontlines of climate impacts. Minister Bowen’s deal with Türkiye secured a commitment to hold the pre-COP in the Pacific – providing an opportunity to ensure Pacific voices are placed at the centre of the agenda at COP 31.
Last year, Plan International Australia and Kiribati Climate Action Network launched a report on the impacts of climate change on over 300 girls from the Pacific. We sought to hear how climate change impacted their day-to-day lives, from schooling to access to safe drinking water. Half of the girls we spoke to said climate disasters have kept them from school, a third said there is less food to eat, and nearly half said they struggle to find clean water.
The findings were sobering. But it’s worth revisiting them to give a sense of the urgency Minister Bowen needs to bring to the COP talks to honour our Pacific neighbours.
Elenoa is a 12-year old girl living in rural Fiji. Just to get to school each day, she needs to walk 10 km across several bodies of water to get to the school bus. Further sea-level rises would make the walk impossible. Other stories in the report focus on the precariousness of young people, including that of a girl with a disability whose family relies on local rivers, which become dangerously dirty in bad weather events such as king tides, which are becoming more common in Fiji.
Minister Bowen has the opportunity to bring these real-life stories and voices to the global stage in his role as President of COP31. Several recent COP meetings were hosted by petro-states, countries that rely on fossil fuel industries for their economic prosperity. The outcomes have been less than satisfactory, especially to those living with climate impacts every day, such as Pacific islanders.
Can Australia exert its influence to do things differently in Türkiye?
Certainly, young people are hoping so. Minister Bowen has the opportunity to use his presidency of the COP31 negotiations to centre the experiences of our Pacific neighbours on the global stage, using their voices, their stories, and their lived experience to fuel ambition that will not only make their lives better but could offer real hope for the planet.