Climate change is set to dominate the agenda of the 3rd Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) Summit in Suva this week as Pacific nations prepare for the forthcoming United Nations Climate Summit in Paris at the end of November.
The summit’s chief guest, the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Thailand, H.E. General Tanasak Patimapragorn, is arriving in Suva tonight and will join the UN Special Envoy on Climate Change and former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson along with other heads of state, governments and special envoys from across the globe.
This year’s summit, hosted from 2 September to 4 September, is themed “Building Climate Resilient Green Blue Pacific Economies” and comes at a time when Pacific leaders are lobbying larger western nations to agree on binding cuts in carbon emissions to combat global warming.
The Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister will hold talks with the President Epeli Nailatikau and hold separate talks with Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.
This year’s PIDF Summit will also be attended by the presidents and vice presidents of Nauru, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia, the prime ministers of Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tokelau and Tuvalu, foreign ministers from Marshall Islands, Indonesia and Kazakhstan, and envoys and diplomats from other countries who will represent their states at the meeting.
Also attending this year’s summit is the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Kamalesh Sharma.