The Last Stop Before Antalya: The Pacific

The scale of the Pacific is not easy to grasp on a map. The Pacific island region's 14 island states are spread across thousands of islands. Their land masses are small, but when considered together with the marine areas in which they live and which they govern, the region becomes a vast geography exceeding 30 million square kilometres.

Fiji and Tuvalu are two of those countries. Fiji consists of around 330 islands, roughly a third of them inhabited. Tuvalu, meanwhile, comprises only nine islands and coral atolls. Its total land area is approximately 26 square kilometres.

This week, these two countries will be at the centre of climate diplomacy. The official Pre-COP process co-hosted by Fiji, Tuvalu and Australia will take place on 5–8 October. The leaders' event will be held in Tuvalu and Fiji on 5–6 October, followed by the ministerial Pre-COP in Fiji.

Islands in a sea

In 1993, the Pacific anthropologist Epeli Hau'ofa published a short but influential essay entitled Our Sea of Islands.

Hau'ofa objected to the way outsiders viewed the Pacific. On a map, the islands appeared as small, poor and isolated dots scattered across a boundless ocean. For Pacific peoples, however, the sea was not an emptiness separating the islands, but a route connecting them.

Their ancestors had crossed thousands of kilometres by canoe, carrying networks of kinship, trade and marriage from one end of the ocean to the other. Their world was therefore not confined to the small pieces of land beneath their feet. The sea was part of their home too.

Some found this approach overly romantic. Yet Hau'ofa's thinking had an important political consequence. How a community defines itself also changes what it demands from the international system. If you see yourself only as a small and vulnerable island, you ask for help. If you see yourself as the guardian of a great ocean, you demand a voice in how that ocean is governed.

Fiji, which is hosting the Pre-COP this week, is precisely where this idea took root.

The same perspective is visible in recent statements by Fiji's Permanent Secretary for Environment and Climate Change, Dr Sivendra Michael. He argues that the Pacific should be recognised not only for its vulnerability to climate change, but also for its experience and solutions.

Fiji's three priorities for Antalya should be read in that light.

First priority: keeping 1.5 degrees on the table

Fiji's first priority is to keep the 1.5°C target alive. Seen from the Pacific, this is not a climate-diplomacy slogan. It is a question of habitability.

For small island states, the danger is not only that they may one day disappear entirely beneath the water. Life on an island can become difficult long before that point. As seas rise, coastlines erode, flooding becomes more frequent and salt water can contaminate freshwater supplies. As coral reefs are damaged, the islands' natural protection against waves weakens, while fisheries and livelihoods contract.

The IPCC's calculations show why the extra half a degree matters. On small islands, freshwater stress could be around 25 percent lower if global warming is held at or below 1.5°C than in a 2°C world. Even at 1.5°C, between 70 and 90 percent of reef-building corals are expected to be lost; at 2°C, losses could reach 99 percent.

For the Pacific, then, the half a degree between 1.5 and 2 is not a small number. Even before deciding whether an island remains on the map, it is one of the differences that determines whether life there can continue.

This is the source of Fiji's demand in Antalya. Preserving 1.5 degrees at the level of rhetoric is not enough; the mechanisms through which emissions are actually reduced must also work.

One mechanism Fiji specifically points to is the Sharm el-Sheikh Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme. Its creation was agreed in Glasgow in 2021 and its working arrangements were set in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022. Its current mandate expires at the end of 2026, although it can be extended. Fiji argues that the programme has so far failed to produce the political outcome required and sees its continuation as one of the critical issues in Antalya.

Second priority: the money exists, but the doorway is narrow

Fiji's second priority is fair access to climate finance. The issue is not only how much money is available, but who can reach it and how.

There are currently eight accredited institutions in the Pacific with direct access to the Green Climate Fund. Yet only three of them can programme GCF resources for Fiji. This points to a broader problem facing small island states. Even when finance exists, the preparation, accreditation and institutional processes needed to access it can weigh heavily on countries with limited capacity.

In short, the problem is not only the amount of money, but the narrowness of the doorway leading to it.

The Climate Implementation Bridge on Türkiye's COP31 agenda approaches the same problem from another direction. Its purpose is to help countries turn their climate priorities into finance-ready, investable project portfolios.

There is also a direct point of intersection. Fiji is one of the first five pilot countries for the Climate Implementation Bridge announced by the Türkiye COP31 Presidency on 24 September. The Pacific's access-to-finance problem and Türkiye's “implementation” agenda are therefore no longer meeting only in theory; they now meet within the same project.

Third priority: at which table does the ocean sit?

The ocean is where Türkiye and Fiji intersect most clearly. “Oceans and Seas” appears as a separate theme in Türkiye's COP31 Action Agenda. Fiji also wants to move the ocean to the centre of the COP.

But Fiji is not merely asking for new ocean projects, initiatives and partnerships to be announced. Pacific countries want the ocean to be brought explicitly onto the formal COP agenda for the first time.

The distinction can be understood as two rooms. In one, countries, companies and organisations announce initiatives, form partnerships and unveil financing. This is the Action Agenda. In the other, countries negotiate text and produce formal decisions. This is the negotiating table. The Pacific's demand is for the ocean to move from the first room into the second.

Nor is this a distant Pacific issue for Türkiye. Copernicus's tenth Ocean State Report, published on 30 September, showed record-breaking marine heatwaves in the Mediterranean and Black Seas in 2024. In some areas, sea temperatures rose more than 4.6°C above normal values.

Antalya's coastline is part of this changing sea. Moving the ocean to the centre of climate policy is therefore not only a Pacific concern. Some of the problems the Pacific faces today are increasingly confronting the Mediterranean too, albeit at different scales and in different forms.

Antalya's test

COP31's governance model makes this entire discussion even more interesting.

Türkiye is hosting COP31 and holds its presidency, while Australia will lead the formal negotiating process as President of the Negotiations. A significant part of Fiji's three priorities falls precisely within that formal negotiating space. Australia is also the country co-hosting the Pacific Pre-COP with Fiji and Tuvalu.

Türkiye's Action Agenda and the Pacific's demands use the same words: 1.5 degrees, finance and the ocean. Yet those words find their counterparts in different parts of the COP architecture. The question is not whether the Pacific's demands will be heard in Antalya. The real question is at which table they will receive an answer.

What Hau'ofa said more than thirty years ago remains meaningful for Antalya today. The sea can be seen as a vast emptiness separating shores, or as a shared space connecting them.

Antalya is also a coastal city. For the road from the Pacific to Antalya to carry real meaning, using the same words will not be enough. The same issues must be carried, with the same weight, to the table where decisions are made.