Commonwealth summit frontlines climate action
- Welcome to Samoa
- Cancer stricken King Charles sips Samoan narcotic brew
Sopuruchi Onwuka, with agency reports
Calls for climate action and climate finance for former British colonies dominate the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) as even the host Samoa is expected to lead calls for control of climate warming emissions.
The meeting builds momentum even as King Charles of England who arrived Samoa from Australia relaxed with local chiefs who offered him the ceremonial narcotic kava liqueur before making him a local High Chief. He was on tour of some commonwealth Islands in the pacific region ahead of the CHOGM in Apia.
Queen Camila watches as King Charled gulps narcotic ava brew during a CHOGM visit to Samoa
King Charles of England is also in Samoa for the CHOGM, bringing the huge image of the British Empire to loom large at the meeting.
Other countries including Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Fiji have also backed calls for a “fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty” which essentially requires industrialized commonwealth countries like Australia, Britain and Canada to do more to lower emissions.
African nations which are expected to produce the next Secretary General of the Commonwealth also demand reparations from Britain for years of colonialism, resource looting and slavery. However, the reparations they demand would come in form of voluntary climate financing required to build infrastructure against extreme weather impacts like flooding, wildfires, heat waves and draught.
Pacific leaders argue the trio of “big countries” have historically accounted for over 60 percent of the Commonwealth’s emissions from fossil fuels.
Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change Ralph Regenvanu called on other nations to join the treaty.
“As a Commonwealth family, we look to those that dominate fossil fuel production in the Commonwealth to stop the expansion of fossil fuels in order to protect what we love and hold dear here in the Pacific,” he said.
Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong said her gas and mineral-rich nation was working to be cleaner.
“We know we have a lot of work to do, and I’ve been upfront with every partner in the Pacific,” she said.
Pacific island nations — once seen as the embodiment of palm-fringed paradise — are now among the most climate-threatened areas of the planet.
Samoan local chief, Lenatai Victor Tamapua, stated that he would raise the issue of climate change with the king and queen and show them the local mangroves.
“The high tides is just chewing away on our reef and where the mangroves are,” he said, adding that food sources and communities were being washed away or inundated.
“Our community relies on the mangrove area for mud crab and fishes, but since, the tide has risen over the past 20 years by about two or three metres.”
Commonwealth leaders are expected to select a new Secretary-General from Africa, in line with regional rotations of the position. And all three likely candidates have called publicly for reparations for slavery and colonialism.
King Charles confronts demands for reparations with stories about painful colonial past
One of the three, Joshua Setipa from Lesotho, said the resolution could include non-traditional forms of payment such as climate financing.
“We can find a solution that will begin to address some injustices of the past and put them in the context happening around us today,” he said.
Meanwhile, King Charles III who was in Samoa took part in a traditional kava-drinking ceremony and was declared a “high chief” of his Pacific island realm on Thursday.
The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa, independent nations where he is still nominal head of state. The visit is part of the first major foreign trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
The 75-year-old king sat at the head of a carved timber longhouse where he was presented with a polished half-coconut filled with a mildly narcotic kava brew: the peppery, slightly intoxicating root drink which is a key part of Pacific culture .
The kava roots were paraded around the marquee, prepared by the chief’s daughter and filtered through a sieve made of the dried bark of a fau tree.
Once ready, a Samoan man screamed as he decanted the drink, which was finally presented to the king.
“May God Bless this ava” the king prayed before taking a gulp. He was later made “Tui Taumeasina” or high chief when he visited the village of Moata’a.
The king had a dramatic outing in Australia where a high ranking legislator confronted him the brutality and savagery of colonialism and declared that Charles is not king over indigenous Australians.
