Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2024. US$40.00, paper. ISBN 9780522879506.
Climate Politics in Oceania: Renewing Australia-Pacific Relations in a Warming World brings together prominent scholars from Australia and the Pacific region to discuss Australia’s re-engagement with climate change, the single greatest existential threat for Pacific Island Countries (PICs) in the post-2022 Australian elections era. Chapters in the volume discuss Australia’s traditional focus on militaristic, geo-strategic security concerns and contrast those to the needs of its Pacific Island neighbours who instead call for more focus on climate security.
The book begins with an introduction to the Blue Pacific narrative and identity by Dame Meg Taylor, the former secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum. This short opening chapter—a republished version of remarks made by Dame Taylor at the initial workshop for the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent—sets the scene by laying out the Pacific position, to which Australia’s policies and (in)actions are analyzed and compared in the chapters that follow. As Dame Taylor makes clear, the region’s most defining challenges can be framed within two interconnected dimensions of risk: climate change and geopolitics (23). It is this tension that all chapters of the book independently explore.
In addition to setting the scene in terms of Pacific priorities, the book also lays out a science framework before moving on to Australia’s position and policies. Bradshaw’s chapter unapologetically illustrates the inevitable climate scenarios that we, Australia included, are heading for if the level of ambition is not raised by parties across the globe.
Byrne, Haefner, and Nalau explore the role of environmental ambassadors in Australia’s recent diplomatic history and show how the individuals holding this position have for three decades balanced domestic pressures with global expectations, navigating the often-competing interests of different actors. Morgan, Carter, and Manoa discuss the importance of Pacific regionalism and collaboration within the global climate regime and show how PICs have become leaders in climate diplomacy, united in their expectations and demands toward Australia as their key development partner. Newton Cain, Kant, Ruwet, and Byrne identify various opportunities to and challenges of increasing engagement between China and the Pacific, looking at what kind of a role the country may play, and asking whether it has a potential to become a “climate ally” to the region.
Sargent, Conley Tyler, and Beeson all look at Australia’s defence policy and strategic priorities in their respective chapters and discuss, from different angles, how Australia’s orthodox view on security hinders its capability to meaningfully engage with the climate threat and by extension its island neighbours. These chapters show how differences between Australia and the Pacific Island Countries in how security is conceived and understood has not only complicated diplomatic relationships in the region, but also produced competing and contradictory security narratives.
In their contributions Tarte, and Strating and Wallis, return to the Blue Pacific narrative and demonstrate how the concept is about not only identity-construction of PICs, but also an innovative response to challenges to their security, sovereignty, and geopolitical contestation. In Tarte’s chapter, the alleged contest between the Indo-Pacific security narrative, which focuses on the China threat, and the Blue Pacific narrative with its focus on human security and climate change, are critically explored by looking at the divergences and convergences between the two. The Pacific, Tarte concludes, may be well positioned to advance the link between geopolitics and climate change through the Blue Pacific narrative (193–194).
All chapters in the volume point out some critical deficiencies in Australia’s priorities and its evident inability to sufficiently respond to climate change and have more sustainable climate policies, nationally and globally. Every chapter proposes ways in which Australia could make itself a better partner—a true “Pacific family” member as Strating and Wallis discuss—to its regional neighbours and illustrates how, in many respects, there is still much Australia could and should do to become a credible climate ally in the region. A constant theme throughout is the increase in geopolitical contestation in the region, which from Australia’s perspective justifies its focus on traditional security concerns over the climate threat. Here, several chapters in particular discuss the rise of China as a significant geopolitical player and development partner for Pacific Island Countries—much to Australia’s discomfort.
While other powers do have cursory mentions, I would have liked to have seen more focus on Australia’s close relationship to the United States and its impact on Australia’s policies toward the Pacific and climate change. Whereas Biden’s recommitment to the Paris Agreement and global climate regime is discussed in several chapters, the book do not contemplate the possibility, now a reality, of the new disengagement by the US and its effects. Where will Australia stand when its closest ally and security partner turns its back, once again, to multilateralism and is not only ignorant but even hostile toward any progress in the climate change space in near future? The authors of the book could not, of course, have a crystal ball to predict the outcome of the 2024 US elections—or moreover that the result would render even the use of term “climate change” problematic—but it seems to me that these new developments will, as we have seen for instance with AUKUS (discussed in Beeson), have crucial implications for Australia-Pacific relationships now and in the future.
Milla Vaha
University of the South Pacific, Suva