Australia - Tuvalu sign resettlement treaty over existential rising seas climate threat: Australia –Tuvalu Falepili Union

Australia –Tuvalu Falepili Union

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has signed an agreement with the Tuvalu PM, Kausea Natano, to set up “a union” between the two countries.

The arrangement will offer a special visa that offers safe residency to the people of Tuvalu so they can work, live and study in Australia because of the impacts of climate change.

The agreement was made at the Pacific Islands Forum in the Cook Islands. It will see 280 people per year given a "special mobility pathway" to "live, work and study" in Australia. Tuvalu is a low lying Pacific nation with about 11,000 people.

In return, Australia will have effective veto power over Tuvalu's security arrangements with any other country.

The Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union comprises a bilateral treaty between Tuvalu and Australia, as well as a commitment articulated in a joint leaders' statement (see below) to uplift broader bilateral partnership.

"Falepili" is a Tuvaluan word for the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect.

The Treaty comes as the Queensland government approved new fossil fuel projects: incentivised a new frontier in gas exploration program in the Bowen and Galilee Basin and granted a coal mine extension. Since the Federal Labor Government has come to power it has approved 10 new or extended coal and gas projects, and committed $1.5 billion for the Darwin Middlearm petrochemical hub that will include an LNG plant for export of Beetaloo fracked Gas.

The Paris moment for climate justice and the historic #Parisagreement of #COP21

In the history of the World the Paris Agreement will be regarded as an historic moment. Even though it was far from perfect and didn’t go far enough. It was part of the Paris moment for climate justice.

Paris was a moral turning point. When 195 countries agreed by consensus to set a target to decarbonise by the later half of the century, an ambitious climate temperature goal and an international framework to achieve it.

It signifies the turning of the tide against fossil fuel pollution, although as Naomi Klein highlights, fossil fuels is not mentioned once in the agreement.