Climate Change

It has been almost eight years since 195 countries signed the Paris Agreement and promised to cut their emissions.

The United Nations measured their progress in its latest report, part of an overall 'global stocktake' that will form the basis of the COP28 summit later this year.

University of Canterbury political science professor Bronwyn Hayward said the results were mixed.

"This is telling us how the world is progressing, which is not well," she said.

"Not as absolutely terrible as it could be, but we're still heading for a 2.5C warmer world."

Several Pacific nations are competing at the World Athletics Championships being held in Budapest, Hungary.

Rising sea levels in the Pacific region have put the future of several nations at risk, and World Athletics President Sebastian Coe has acknowledged that some IAAF members "probably will not be in existence in the next 20 years".

World Athletics head of sustainability Bob Ramsak chaired a panel discussion with officials from the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Samoa, Tuvalu and Vanuatu entitled 'Sport on the Climate Change Front Lines'.

US researchers said the new record was the highest in any instrumental record dating back to the end of the 19th century.

Scientists believe a combination of a natural weather event known as El Niño and mankind's ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide are driving the heat.

Last month has also been confirmed as the world's warmest June yet recorded.

Scientists at the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction said that the world's average temperature had reached 17.01C on 3 July, breaking the previous record of 16.92C that had stood since August 2016.

It's the major outcome of the 79th Commission Session of the UN Economic and Social Commission of the Asia-Pacific (ESCAP) which concluded in Bangkok, Thailand over the weekend.

The 10 resolutions include promoting clean energy technologies, improving power system connectivity and low-emission mobility, implementing early warning systems and strengthening the use of climate change-related statistics.

Executive secretary of ESCAP, Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, said the global climate fight would be won or lost in this decade.

In the 2022-2023 report released by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, gender-based violence and natural disasters are other key priority focus areas, together with illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU), cybercrime and transnational organised crime.

RNZ Pacific reports Forum Secretary General Henry Puna said: "To achieve the Forum's vision of peace, harmony, security, social inclusion and prosperity, it is important to have regional security mechanisms that help address traditional and non-traditional issues in the Pacific region".

The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, Ian Fry, says the huge human cost of the climate crisis is being ignored.

He told the Human Rights Council that the long-term costs are not being addressed.

Mr Fry implored agencies to provide lasting support for people impacted by climate change.

"Machine guns, fighter jets... are not our primary security concern. The single greatest threat to our very existence is climate change," Fiji Defence Minister Inia Seruiratu said.

He was addressing a summit in Singapore which has focused on China-US tensions and the Ukraine war.

Cyclones have repeatedly battered Fiji and other low-lying Pacific countries.

"It threatens our very hopes and dreams of prosperity. Human-induced, devastating climate change," Mr Seruiratu told the forum, called the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Severe flooding in western Germany in July last year caused major damage. Photo: AFP

A key UN body says in a report that there must be "rapid, deep and immediate" cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Global emissions of CO2 would need to peak within three years to stave off the worst impacts.

Even then, the world would also need technology to suck CO2 from the skies by mid-century.

Only a handful of female leaders including New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern are on the United Nations' climate panel.

The others include German chancellor Angela Merkel, Barbados' president Mia Mottley, Iceland's prime minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas and the head of UN Climate Change Patricia Espinosa.

Many governments claim that 45 percent of their COP26 teams are women.

The 2015 Paris Agreement commits countries to limit the global average temperature rise to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for 1.5C.

Scientists have said crossing the 1.5C threshold risks unleashing far more severe climate change effects on people, wildlife and ecosystems.

Preventing it requires almost halving global CO2 emissions by 2030 from 2010 levels and cutting them to net-zero by 2050 - an ambitious task that scientists, financiers, negotiators and activists at COP26 are debating how to achieve and pay for.