Exorbitant cost for climate event

Hard-pressed taxpayers battling cost-of-living increases will be asked to pay a high price for the nation to host a conference. Anthony Albanese is seeking to lock in the support of Pacific ­nations for Australia’s bid to host the 2026 UN climate conference, COP31. To do so, the government is set to resume Australia’s contribution to the UN’s Green Climate Fund, a commitment likely to cost the nation billions of dollars. Foreign Minister Penny Wong says a “modest contribution” will be detailed by the end of the year. But that is only a small part of what is being demanded. As Graham Lloyd wrote in Friday’s newspaper, environment groups are encouraging Pacific leaders not to quickly back Australia’s request to co-host COP31. Groups such as Greenpeace are demanding that Pacific leaders “hold out for Australia to stop mining and exporting coal and gas”. They claim that contributing to the GCF without stopping all new coal and gas projects is like showing up at a fire with an extinguisher in one hand and a flame thrower in the other.

But shutting down the nation’s most important export industries would devastate the budget and the revenue needed to fund increased defence and social spending and repaying Covid debt. Such fiscal irresponsibility is out of the question, which the government needs to make clear to all stakeholders. It also must clarify whether the extra funds contributed to the GCF would be made instead of or in addition to Australia’s generous aid budget. Scott Morrison was right to withdraw Australia from the GCF amid disagreements between donor and recipient nations and a lack of transparency and oversight about spending.

The Albanese government already has boosted direct climate finance to the Pacific region by $150m across the next four years and is helping island nations access climate financing. It also has announced an Australia-Pacific climate infrastructure scheme to support energy-efficient investments in the region. But it remains to be seen whether Pacific governments regard that as enough to support Australia’s bid to host COP31.

The Pacific Elders Voice, which includes four former Pacific leaders, has declared in a newspaper advertisement that Australia’s bid to host COP31 should not receive the region’s backing unless Australia stopped “doing the very thing driving the climate crisis”, Ben Packham wrote this week. The leaders complained Australia had ignored their calls for years. Vanuatu said last year that ­Pacific support for Australia’s COP31 bid should be conditional on it ending fossil-fuel subsidies. The demands from green groups and some Pacific leaders are in line with Pope Francis’s new climate instruction, Laudate Deum, published on Wednesday. It calls for “more effective world organisations, equipped with the power to provide for the global common good … for the attainment of … essential goals” such as speeding up the transition to wind and solar power and scrapping fossil fuels.