As a practising climate diplomat, I very much welcome the debate on Climate Diplomacy as an opportunity to reflect on how my Government and I can improve on our craft, and edge the world closer towards a safer climate. Nonetheless, I have mixed feelings about this topic: The need for climate diplomacy - and indeed its emergence as a concept - is a recognition that the international system is failing to adequately tackle the problem. What we are talking about is how to address and rectify what is currently a big foreign policy failure.
My work on climate change has brought home some very difficult political realities to me:
• One: International interest in tackling climate change ebbs and flows, but each time it comes back to a high point, the situation is even more urgent and critical than the last time;
• Two: Climate Diplomacy is most effective when you are able to speak to someone else about his or her own political and national interests. Sadly, appeals to morality and fairness are generally ineffective.
• Three: Only the visionary leaders see this problem for what it is – the challenge of our generation. It requires real vision to see beyond short-term political cycles to address a longer-term problem, no matter how dramatic. It is not human nature to adjust behaviour for a problem that is likely to hit home in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time – especially if the worst of the impacts are in someone else’s backyard.
I believe very strongly that climate diplomacy begins at home. The Marshall Islands are lying just two meters above sea level out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Our territory and national identity is under threat. Our people are starting to ask the hard questions, and with increasing regularity: What is happening to my country; where will I go; what will my children do?
Therefore, in the aftermath of the Copenhagen failure, and the realization that things were not looking good, we decided that we needed to take our future into our own hands – and put Climate Diplomacy at the top of our list of foreign policy objectives.
The Marshall Islands’ Climate Diplomacy strategy includes the following three key elements:
• First, enhancing our technical progress in the UNFCCC negotiations, working through AOSIS, as a way to raise our presence and influence, and give us more regular access to the small room and inter-sessional Ministerial discussions that are often crucial in determining the general course of climate negotiations;
• Second, enhancing our international profile, primarily through strategic engagement in the world’s pre-eminent diplomatic forums, such as the Security Council, where I spoke February 2013, and using academic conferences and other public events to raise awareness and make noise in the international media.
• Third, ensuring that climate change is a central message of every one of the Marshall Islands’ diplomatic encounters, whether bilateral, regional or multilateral. The aim is to build political momentum and catalyse domestic action in other countries to accelerate the global response. This means that climate diplomacy is also about economic diplomacy and energy diplomacy, and when times are tough, aid diplomacy.
One of our best diplomatic opportunities to do this came in September 2013 when we hosted the biggest Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in history. The result was the Majuro Declaration for Climate Leadership - adopted by the 14 Pacific Small Islands Developing States (SIDS), Australia and New Zealand, and a host of other countries including the US, the EU, Mexico and now Japan, who together represent more than a third of the world’s emissions.
When we hosted the Pacific Islands Forum, we did so at a time when the US was “pivoting to the Asia-Pacific” (Hillary Clinton attended the Forum for the first time the year before) and China was beginning to emerge as a serious actor in the Pacific for the first time. This geopolitical reality was not lost on us. Nor was the fact that more than 60 % of the world’s emissions come from the countries of the Pacific Rim. So, on our tiny island in Majuro, flanked by the US on one side and China on the other, we sought to bring home this reality by encouraging the biggest emitters in the region to take our calls to action seriously for the first time and stand with us.
Climate diplomacy begins at home, but it requires creative thinking, constant lobbying, and technical substance. Diplomacy has its origins in helping countries avoid the scourge of war and create a better tomorrow. This could not be more true for the challenge of our generation – climate change.
[This text is based on the statement of the Foreign Minister given at the side event “Climate Diplomacy – foreign policy challenges in the Pacific Islands region” at the 3rd UN Conference on Small Island Developing States in Apia (Samoa) on September 3rd, 2014. The text thus reflects the style of an oral presentation.]
