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Showing 9 of 503 news items in Climate Action

Climate ActionMarch 2, 2026

Why location matters for the Pacific Pre-COP

Excerpt from lowyinstitute.org When Australia bid to host the 2026 annual global climate change negotiations COP31, it envisioned a Pacific partnership that would centre climate dialogue around the concerns of vulnerable island nations. After Türkiye refused to withdraw its competing bid, Australia compromised. Türkiye would host the formal conference, while Australia presided over negotiations. Australia has also committed to support a Pacific-hosted Pre-COP meeting, a two-to-three-day preparatory gathering where ministers and senior officials from up to 50 different delegations shape expectations for the main conference. Now, Fiji and Palau are competing to be the venue for these talks. Both nations bring extensive climate credentials, but to maximise this opportunity for the benefit of the region, logistics and symbolic impact must be considered.

Climate ActionFebruary 25, 2026

When Climate Extremes Don’t Lead to Conflict: Evidence from the Pacific Islands

Photo Credit and Excerpt from newsecuritybeat.org Pacific Island countries sit at the frontline of climate change. Many consist of small, low-lying islands, with long coastlines and vast ocean spaces between them. Livelihoods often depend on agriculture and fishing, and importing water or food is often infeasible or expensive. This makes those large ocean nations highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as storms, droughts, and rising sea levels. Given these vulnerabilities, analysts have expressed concerns that climate change could heighten various forms of socio-political conflict in the region. Yet the Pacific Island countries have received scarce attention in research on climate change and conflict. While recent scholarship has begun to explore possible pathways between climate stress and conflict in the Pacific Island countries, the region remains comparatively understudied. This is especially surprising given the regions’ high climate vulnerability and increasing geopolitical relevance.

Climate ActionFebruary 25, 2026

Government announces €6.5 million Creative Climate Action fund III

Excerpt from gov.ie Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, Patrick O’Donovan, and Minister for Climate, Energy and Environment, Darragh O’Brien, today announced a new €6.5 million Creative Climate Action Fund, which will support imaginative, large-scale creative, cultural and artistic initiatives that help communities engage with climate change and empower citizens to make meaningful behavioural change. The Creative Climate Action Fund III is an initiative of the Creative Ireland Programme in partnership with the Shared Island Initiative and the Department of Climate, Energy and Environment. The Creative Climate Action Fund III (2026-2029) will support ambitious, durational projects that bring together expertise from the arts and culture sector, climate science, and community engagement, and is delivered through a cross-Government partnership. This Fund is seeking proposals that respond creatively to key national climate priorities, including those set out in the Climate Action Plan 2025, the National Dialogue on Climate Action, and the work of the Just Transition Commission.

Climate ActionFebruary 11, 2026

Why Greenland plays an outsized role in climate change science

Excerpt from theconversation.com “Observing Greenland from a helicopter,” one scientist wrote last year, “the main problem is one of comprehending scale. I thought we were skimming low over the waves of a fjord, before … realising what I suspected were floating shards of ice were in fact icebergs the size of office blocks. I thought we were hovering high in the sky over a featureless icy plane below, before bumping down gently onto ice only a few metres below us.” This is the view described by Durham glaciologist Tom Chudley, when writing about his research showing the Greenland ice sheet isn’t just melting – it’s falling apart. Chudley and his colleagues found crevasses are growing fast, channelling meltwater deep into the ice sheet, accelerating its slide into the ocean.

Climate ActionFebruary 4, 2026

Cyclones get names but deadly heatwaves don’t. Should Australia personalise severe weather?

Excerpt from theconversation.com Australia’s climate is changing rapidly due to rising global greenhouse gas emissions. Extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones, east coast low pressure systems, flash floods, droughts, bushfires, severe storms, and both land and marine heatwaves are becoming increasingly common, as the National Climate Risk Assessment makes clear. These can overwhelm emergency and medical services, damage infrastructure, and lead to deaths and morbidities. Yet only some extreme weather events receive names. Last November, for example, the Northern Territory was hit by Severe Tropical Cyclone Fina, while much of Australia was about to swelter through an unnamed heatwave.

Climate ActionJanuary 25, 2026

Defending ambition in Belém: a Fijian negotiator’s reflection on COP30

Excerpt from islandsbusiness.com Photo credit: UNFCCC/Kiara Worths via islandsbusiness.com FOR Small Island Developing States (SIDS), climate change is not a distant or theoretical concern. It is already reshaping coastlines, undermining food security, and forcing communities to confront displacement. Fiji arrived in Belém for COP30 with a clear purpose: to defend ambition and protect the integrity of the 1.5°C goal. But for vulnerable countries, ambition is inseparable from delivery. Calls to accelerate mitigation or phase out fossil fuels have little meaning without predictable finance, accessible technology, and credible political commitment from those with the greatest responsibility and capacity to act. COP30 exposed a familiar and deeply troubling reality. Negotiations remained constrained by an entrenched divide between developed countries, reluctant to honour long-standing finance commitments, and major emerging economies unwilling to strengthen mitigation efforts. This framing, where mitigation is treated as a concession by the North and finance as a concession by the South, has become a convenient fiction. It allows both sides to claim grievance while the window for meaningful action continues to narrow. This dichotomy is fundamentally flawed. Finance is not separate from mitigation; it enables it. Developing countries cannot deliver ambitious emissions reductions without the means to do so. Treating these as competing priorities rather than interdependent imperatives undermines both climate outcomes and equity.

Climate ActionJanuary 7, 2026

Polar bears are 'rewriting their DNA' to survive warming Arctic, study suggests

Excerpt from abcnews.go.com A new study from the University of East Anglia suggests that polar bears are undergoing rapid genetic changes, and scientists believe it's due to the impacts of climate change. “It’s kind of the first time that we believe we’ve seen a mammal system such as the polar bear, where temperature has been the lead cause, and environmental stress at increased temperature, is impacting their DNA, their genome in real time,” Alice Godden, the lead author of the study, told ABC News.

Climate ActionJanuary 7, 2026

The Indian Ocean disaster is a climate tragedy — and needs more attention

Photo Credit: Hotli Simanjuntak/EPA/Shutterstock via nature.com Excerpt from nature.com In late November, three tropical cyclones — Senyar, Ditwah and Koto — devastated cities and villages in countries around the Indian Ocean. In Indonesia’s Sumatra, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, torrential rains, high winds, landslides and flash floods killed at least 1,000 people, buried homes beneath metres of mud and destroyed roads and bridges. The storms’ destructive scale is close to that of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, as Muzakir Manaf, the governor of Aceh, Indonesia, said in a statement. However, the world has mostly overlooked this emergency. Millions of people have been displaced, and many are sick or starving, yet aid has been slow to arrive. Few people have recognized the cyclones’ unusual nature and what they herald for the world’s future.

Climate ActionDecember 15, 2025

Looking ahead to COP31: ensuring Pacific and island voices are heard

Excerpt from islandsbusiness.com PACIFIC leaders and representatives of overseas countries and territories are rushing to ensure that their voices are not pushed to the margins again. Regional governments and organisations have emerged from COP30 in Belem, Brazil facing the reality that their voices remain largely unheard, their concerns unrecognized by larger, more powerful nations. The region has started to pivot from negotiation to delivery after COP30, fully aware of the loneliness they face on the frontline of rising seas and intensifying storms.