‘They ain’t seen nothing yet’: UN boss names climate change impacts coming to Australia

Australia needs drastic economic reform to avoid a future where it could be forced to resettle large populations of climate refugees from the Pacific and the food bowl of the Murray Darling Basin could be decimated.

That is the view of the United Nations’ top climate official, Simon Stiell, who spoke exclusively to this masthead following a meeting last week with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.

Simon Stiell, the UN’s top climate official, has urged Australia to embrace wholesale economic reform to address climate change. Credit: Getty

Stiell said Australia has more to gain and more to lose than most nations and therefore had a responsibility to help lead a global effort to decarbonise its economies and unlock the trillions of dollars needed to prepare for climate impacts.

“It is Australia which will be the front and centre in resettling entire national populations [if climate targets are not met],” said Stiell, who has served as the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change since August 2022.

His comments follow a treaty signed last year that allows citizens of Tuvalu escaping the impact of climate change a special visa to resettle in Australia.

Stiell said Australia could “seize huge opportunities” and avoid “climate carnage” if it adopted a “climate forward economic reform agenda.”

He said Albanese, Bowen and other G20 leaders were fully aware of the opportunities and threats presented by climate change.

“Folks think food prices at the checkout are bad now. They ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Simon Stiell

He said if G20 nations – which contribute 80 per cent of global emissions and represent 85 per cent of global GDP – do not step up the collective pace of emissions reductions to be on track to halve by 2030, Australia’s economy and living standard would be severely damaged.

“Just to give you a very practical example, right here in Australia the Murray Darling food basin will be decimated. Folks think food prices at the checkout are bad now. They ain’t seen nothing yet.

“Entire island nations neighbouring Australia will also be wiped out, and it is Australia which will be the front and centre in resettling entire national populations.

“My point is that the logic is unassailable, a bold domestic climate forward economic reform agenda in Australia [is necessary] both to seize the huge opportunities, but also to avoid climate carnage.”

He said advances were made at the global climate talks in November, where the world agreed to transition from fossil fuels, but that the pace needed to step up.

“I welcome Australia’s reinvigorated climate efforts and legislated policy progress in recent years, and I said to the PM and the Minister Bowen precisely that.

“But it’s also clear that the world needs countries like Australia to take climate action and ambition to the next level, and it’s firmly in the interests of every Australian that they do so.”

Under the Paris Accord nations agreed to set their own emissions reductions targets, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, in order to set the world on a path to holding warming to 1.5 degrees. NDCs are updated every five years, and many nations, including Australia, are in the process of setting new, more ambitious targets to be delivered next year.

Stiell says so much climate action is needed that NDCs need to be seated in wholesale economic reform across entire economies.

“As a highly skilled, largely knowledge-driven economy, Australia is perfectly placed to become a global leader in renewables and climate innovation.”

He said the decarbonisation of the global economy was now inevitable and would be the greatest economic transformation of our time, and an economic boon to nations that positioned themselves to take advantage of it.

But he acknowledged the costs would also be staggering. In a recent speech in Baku in Azerbaijan, where the next global climate talks will be held, he said that by one estimate $US2.4 trillion needed to be invested each year in renewable energy, adaptation, and other climate-related issues in developing countries excluding China.

Stiell met with Bowen and Albanese on Thursday before visiting Port Kembla with Bowen on Friday. His next stop will be Fiji, where he will meet with regional finance ministers.