This is where Australia’s relationship with the Pacific deserves scrutiny. Australia’s COP31 role, including chairing negotiations, was accompanied by commitments to elevate Pacific priorities. The Pacific pre-COP (Opens in new window) in Fiji and Tuvalu offered an opportunity to place the region’s experiences, leadership and demands at the centre of climate diplomacy. For Pacific nations, climate change is inseparable from ocean health, sovereignty, cultural continuity, food security and intergenerational justice. So, what happens to those priorities when diplomacy moves from the Pacific to Antalya?
The proposed Pacific Resilience Facility pledging (Opens in new window) event is welcome. Finance matters enormously for countries bearing disproportionate climate impacts. But Pacific leadership cannot be reduced to seeking financial assistance for climate resilience. Pacific nations offer something more profound: an understanding of the ocean not merely as a resource to manage, but as a living system to which people belong and bear responsibilities. That understanding should be shaping global climate governance, not decorating its margins.
There are reasons for cautious optimism, although the contradictions are difficult to ignore. COP17 (Opens in new window) acknowledged that the ocean has been overlooked for too long, yet stopped short of new legally binding commitments. Days later, as attention turns to COP31, the ocean remains conspicuously absent from the proposed leaders’ agenda.
The first global assessment under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (Opens in new window) explicitly recognises Sustainable Ocean Plans as an approach to implementation. Advanced through the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (Opens in new window), these plans offer countries a way to coordinate decisions across fisheries, conservation, restoration, tourism, offshore energy and the wider ocean economy.
Protecting 30% of the ocean cannot compensate for degrading the remaining 70%. Nor can marine protected areas succeed while institutions governing fisheries, pollution and waste, development and energy pursue conflicting priorities. But promising frameworks need political traction. Elevating the ocean–climate nexus (Opens in new window) was an explicit priority of the Australia–Pacific COP31 Partnership. The Pacific pre-COP was intended to bring the region’s priorities to the centre of international climate diplomacy. Yet as leaders prepare to gather in Antalya, where has that ambition gone?
Australia is helping lead a high-level discussion on electrification and supporting a Pacific resilience financing event. While both matter, neither substitutes for political leadership on the ocean. How does an ocean-centred region, championing an ocean-centred climate agenda, arrive at a leaders’ summit without a dedicated discussion on the ocean?
The ocean has not disappeared entirely. It remains in the Action Agenda and pavilion discussions. But there is a profound difference between appearing on a program and shaping political decisions. How can Australia now demonstrate that its Pacific partnership extends beyond diplomatic commitments? The ocean needs a place at the leaders’ table, backed by investment, accountability and action, otherwise, we risk repeating the familiar cycle: ambitious commitments made in the Pacific, applauded internationally, and quietly diluted when the real political decisions are made elsewhere.
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