This week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is travelling to Honiara in the Solomon Islands, where he will meet with leaders from across the Pacific at the annual Pacific Islands Forum.
Climate change will be high on the agenda as Australia seeks to lock in support for its bid to host the UN’s Climate Conference, COP31, in 2026 and as Pacific Island countries continue to grapple with escalating climate disasters, the loss of livelihoods and cultural heritage and the existential threat of rising seas.
The cost of inaction
To coincide with the Pacific Islands Forum, ActionAid has joined with partners to release a new report calling on Australia to triple its climate finance to $11 billion over 2025-2030 to support low-income countries to scale up climate action.
Across the Pacific, the costs of the climate crisis are skyrocketing as global heating drives devastating cyclones, floods and droughts. Pacific countries and communities urgently need funding to adapt to climate impacts, rebuild from climate disasters, and transition their economies away from fossil fuels.
Yet, rich, high emitting, countries like Australia are failing to provide the climate funding that they owe. Last year at COP29, governments agreed to triple international climate finance to US$300 billion annually by 2035.
Australia’s fair share of the new global goal is AU$14 billion per year by 2035 – or 4.8% of the global target. Right now, Australia is contributing less than 1% of global climate finance, well short of the funding it owes.
Pacific women are paying the price
Because rich countries like Australia aren’t paying up their climate finance commitments, the costs of the climate crisis are being pushed onto Pacific governments and communities, with women and other marginalised communities affected the most.
In 2023 when two cyclones hit Vanuatu in 24 hours, 80% of the population was affected as the cyclones destroyed homes and crops, with devastating impacts on women’s livelihoods. The cyclones are estimated to have caused US$433 million in losses and damages – 41% of Vanuatu’s annual GDP. Australia stepped up to provide AU$12.8 million in response to the disasters, but this was less than 2% of the loss and damage costs.
Australia’s leadership opportunity
This year, as Australia bids to host COP31 – the 2026 UN climate conference in partnership with Pacific Island countries – it is also due to release its new international climate finance goal. If the government is committed to a genuine partnership with Pacific Island countries and providing real leadership on climate change, this is the opportunity to put that commitment into action.
Whenever the conversation of international climate finance comes up in national and global dialogues we hear the same refrain – rich countries are doing what they can, but they simply do not have the resources to meet low-income countries’ climate finance demands.
Yet, while women and their communities are battling the daily realties of a heating planet, Australia handed out $14.5 billion in fossil fuel subsidies to industries that are driving the climate crisis in 2023-24 – the same amount as Australia’s entire new annual fair share of climate finance.
What’s the solution?
Redirecting just 20% of annual fossil fuel subsidies towards international climate finance would enable Australia to meet the $11 billion goal for 2025-2030. And by introducing a climate pollution levy on coal, oil and gas corporations, Australia could raise $100 billion per year starting in 2030.
Allocating 10% of this funding each year towards international climate finance would put Australia well on track to achieve its annual $14 billion fair share.
If Australia wants to step up as a climate leader on the global stage, it must put its words into action and put real money on the table so that women and frontline communities across the Pacific and internationally have the resources they need to respond when the next climate disaster hits.