Vanuatu’s place at the centre of the Paris climate agreement: from little things, big things grow

Vanuatu from space. Photo: NASA

Today, the world is celebrating as the Paris climate agreement comes into legal force — and a proposal Vanuatu made in 1991 is now at the centre of the agreement.

The Paris Agreement is a UN treaty that commits the world’s countries to keeping carbon emissions “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”. Like most multi-party agreements, it isn’t perfect, but the Paris Agreement is humanity’s most concerted attempt at preventing a global climate catastrophe to date.

As a Pacific island nation, Vanuatu has been hit hard by the impacts of climate change, experiencing sea level rise, cycles of drought and flooding, coral bleaching and mass fish deaths and more destructive cyclones, to name but a few.

The Paris Agreement is especially important for countries like Vanuatu. But Vanuatu also has another reason to celebrate today: with the legal activation of the Paris Agreement, loss and damage—a measure first proposed by Vanuatu in 1991, and now a key article of the Paris Agreement—becomes central to how the global community responds to climate change. Read the rest of this entry »