Pacific islanders threaten to sue polluters over climate change

THE Pacific island nation of Vanuatu may sue fossil fuel companies and high polluting countries over the climate change that poses an “existential threat” to the low-lying archipelago, its government said yesterday.

Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s foreign minister, said it was looking at claiming damages over the rising sea level and growing number of storms buffeting the now “desperate” island chain.

Lying exactly at sea level, Vanuatu, with an estimated 280,000 inhabitants spread across roughly 80 islands, is among more than a dozen such Pacific countries that have found themselves on the front line of climate change.

Extreme weather is wreaking increasing havoc on the economies of these island nations, many of them already fragile. In Vanuatu’s case, 64 per cent of its GDP was wiped out in a single cyclone in 2015, causing economic losses of $450 million (£350 million), Mr Regenvanu said.

The minister accused fossil fuel companies, financial institutions and the governments of major polluters of “actively and knowingly” causing the climate change that was bringing catastrophe to such vulnerable nations.

It was time, he insisted, that some of the billions of dollars of profits reaped by energy corporations every year was diverted to compensate for such damage. Mr Regenvanu told the Climate Vulnerable Forum’s Virtual Summit that Vanuatu now was studying its legal options. “My government is now exploring all avenues to utilise the judicial system in various jurisdictions – including under international law – to shift the costs of climate protection back on to fossil fuel companies, the financial institutions and the governments that actively and knowingly created this existential threat to my country,” he said.

“This is really about claiming for the damages,” Mr Regenvanu told Reuters later in the day, adding that Vanuatu would also seek to join forces with other similarly affected nations in pursuing legal action.

Vanuatu would raise the issue with other countries at the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as COP24, next month, the foreign minister added. Samoa, on behalf of the 18 Pacific Islands Forum members, including Vanuatu, on Saturday called on leaders of the Asia-pacific Economic Cooperation to pay more attention to climate change.

Greenpeace International welcomed what it said was a “brave announcement” by tiny Vanuatu. The move was “part of a global wave of legal action against oil, gas, and coal companies and laggard governments”, said Jennifer Morgan, its executive director.