Prime Minister Hon. Mark Brown has wrapped up a week at the Pacific Pre-COP31 in Tuvalu and Fiji with a message he says belongs as much to families at home as to the world’s leaders: the Pacific is not waiting to be told help is coming.
“This was my first visit to Tuvalu, and standing on the shores of Funafuti I thought of our own people, especially in the Northern Group,” Prime Minister Brown said. “Communities. Homes. Our very future. What Tuvalu lives with every day, many of our families in the Pa Enua already know.”
In Tuvalu, the Prime Minister flew over the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project and met with the local community and youth. He is bringing home practical lessons on how the project was chosen, financed and delivered, to help guide long-term decisions for our own islands. With our new national LiDAR data and GeoPortal, launched last month, the Cook Islands has strong evidence to plan from, and is ready to turn it into investment for our communities.
At the Leaders’ Plenary in Nadi, the Prime Minister pointed to the fuel crisis that families at home have felt this year.
“If the world is capable of mobilising hundreds of billions in a few months to counter the impact of the global fuel crisis, why can we not place the same urgency and commitment on climate finance?” he said. “Urgency is a two-way street.”
Speaking at the Access to Finance session, the Prime Minister, who has been Finance Minister since 2010, was blunt about what slow finance costs a small country.
“Delay does not remove the cost. It transfers it. To our budgets. To our public servants. To families who pay for time they did not waste.”
He set three tests for the new Access to Finance Plan: put a clock on how long providers take to decide; stop making small administrations prove the same things over and over; and fund the way our islands actually work, with long-term programmes and grants where more debt would undo the resilience we are building.
“At COP31, tell us what you will change. A year later, show us what changed,” he said. “We will report on our delivery. We ask you to report on yours.”
The Prime Minister also backed a strong new round of funding for the Green Climate Fund, our biggest climate partner. Of the more than US$109 million in climate finance the Cook Islands has secured since 2018, around US$72 million came through the Fund. That includes stronger health facilities in 30 communities and a US$44.2 million programme that puts money directly into households, businesses and community groups to build back after cyclones.
During the week he met Solomon Islands Prime Minister Hon. Matthew Wale; thanked Fiji Prime Minister Hon. Sitiveni Rabuka for hosting; explored official relations with Mauritius President H.E. Dharam Gokhool; and raised the fuel-crisis comparison with COP31 President H.E. Murat Kurum.
“Everything we pushed for this week comes back home: water, coastal protection, transport and the infrastructure our islands depend on,” Prime Minister Brown said. “Now we take that message to Antalya.”
