The man behind Majuro: Minister Tony De Brum

 

I want to begin by asking you to imagine a world far from this darkened, air conditioned room. I want to transport you to a very different world – my world – where climate change is a lived reality and a battle my people fight every day.

- Tony De Brum to UN climate talks

 

 

I come from the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a country made up of more than a thousand islands scattered over a million square kilometres of ocean, about four hours flight south-west of Hawaii. Our islands lie an average of just two meters above sea level, and we are one of only four coral atoll countries in the world. Mine is a country where the ocean is rising faster than anywhere else in the world, where the coral beneath our feet is being eaten away, and where the window of opportunity to secure our long-term survival feels like it is closing before our eyes.

- Tony De Brum to UN climate talks

 

 

Yesterday and today, I got lucky enough to spend a few hours tracking a real climate leader: Senator Tony de Brum, the Minister in Assistance to the President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the man who masterminded the recent Majuro Declaration on Climate Leadership. The Minister was frank, candid, and charming (as always), and gave me an insight into the life of a vulnerable state’s negotiator.

 

We commit to being climate leaders. - Art 8, Majuro Declaration

 

 

He expressed his frustration with the United Nations climate talks. He said that the Marshall Islands sometimes felt “like the perennial mouse in the treadmill“, constantly running but getting nowhere. Every year, people keep “giving the same speeches, singing the same songs, dancing the same dances, and expecting different results”.

 

If it were not a matter of survival, we wouldn’t be wasting our time here. We’d be drinking beer and eating polish sausages.

 

 

Too much, he noted, has remained the same over the last 2o years: “It is a never ending story.” As a result, the Marshall Islands’ president “gave the exact same speech as at the first Rio”. The talks are: “difficult to understand, difficult to move, not only difficult to do here but also difficult to explain to our own communities.”

 

The urgency in our part of the world is undisputed … you wonder: what does it take?

 

He focuses particular attention on the need for a separate loss and damage mechanism, negotiating for one of the Alliance of Small Island States. In the context of nuclear testing, the Marshall Islands has had unique experience of the need for strong, meaningful compensation mechanisms.

 

Even after having endured the horror of some 67 different nuclear tests in the middle of last century, the threat posed by climate change now threatens to wipe us out entirely. - Tony De Brum to UN climate talks

 

Many claims awarded by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal remain unpaid. He is concerned that loss and damage might be “drowned” if it was lumped in with adaptation. Stressing the need to bring in major states, he applies the Marshall Islands’ past claims experience.:

You cannot just claim empty space. There is a lot of vacuum in the room. We’ve been struggling as hard as we can as negotiators from the small islands to bring the countries together.

 

But he is optimistic, not frustrated or dispirited. He notes that parties had been “working very hard all through the night“, and that the Warsaw talks have been dealing with some of the most difficult climate issues - and made significant progress. He takes comfort that even Connie Hedegaard, who he calls “an institution in herself” and “one of the most respected icons in this process“, had expressed similar frustrations to his. The UN process has advantages for a country like the Marshall Islands:

You know your voice is equal to everybody. You’ve got one voice and one vote and so does the US.

 

It’s no wonder that he stands strong, because this isn’t his first prolonged negotiation. He worked for 17 years to negotiate his country’s independence from the United States, and notes that was only a two party negotiation compared to the UN talks’ 200 or so.

 

We don’t restrict our climate change efforts to the UNFCCC, and we think that’s good practice because you never know what might happen.

 

 

Today, the Minister met Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres informally and had formal one-on-ones (or bilaterals in conference-speak) with US negotiator Todd Stern and with Connie Hedegaard.

 

 

Minister De Brum does not focus only on the United Nations climate talks though. Yesterday he published a Guardian op-ed together with Mary Robinson and Kelly Rigg:

We are now at a tipping point that threatens to flip the world into a full blown climate emergency. As the poorest and most vulnerable people of the world endure the increasingly damaging impacts of a warming world, tired excuses and calls to delay action are no longer acceptable.

Economics aside, this is a moral and ethical challenge of the highest order.

 

Read it, the whole thing. It’s worth it.

 

 

The Marshall Islands is working on numerous other climate and ecological fronts. They lead their own solar power projects, have very successfully engaged youth in the process, and (inspired by Palau creating the world’s first shark sanctuary) recently created the world’s largest shark sanctuary. The Marshall Islands is attempting to lead on climate mitigation and adaptation through actions as well as words.

 

Earlier this year, my Government was forced to declare a State of Disaster when an unprecedented and prolonged drought across our northern atolls left thousands of my people without enough food or water.

Just six weeks later, a king tide flooded our capital to the south, including our President’s home and our airport. Two climate disasters in two months. As I said to the US emergency response team that came to assist: “Welcome to climate change!”

While we are on the difficult road to recovery, it will not be the last time, and I cannot help but feel gravely concerned of a complex and painful future beyond the reach of resilience and adaptation.

- Tony De Brum to UN climate talks

In spite of all this, we islanders are not waiting for the proverbial coconut to fall on our head. We may be small, but we are committed to leading the way. We have now completely solarised our outer island communities, and we are working on an Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion to use the power of the ocean that surrounds us to turn us into a “carbon negative” nation. And we are leading some of the most ambitious ecosystem-based adaptation efforts in the world, through our subregional Micronesia Challenge. Our message to the world is simple – if we can do it, so can you.

 

He describes the Majuro Declaration as “the Pacific’s gift to the UN” and suggests it is a way to revitalise the climate talks. It is a way to “to warm up the ambition gap”. Unlike the United Nations process, it is open to businesses and civil society to participate, not just observe. It is supported by “not just governments, but NGOs, banks, shipping companies” and others. Further, small Pacific states sometimes find other avenues much easier to engage with, because of the practical and psychological barriers to accessing the United Nations talks.

The Majuro Declaration is a transformative document. It sets out ambitious commitments (and even New Zealand signed on). The Minister says that it has had a very positive response. Mexico signed on today while I was tracking the Minister.

 

In this spirit, just two months ago in our capital Majuro, we hosted the biggest Pacific Islands Forum in history. The result was the Majuro Declaration for Climate Leadership, a clarion call to action forged on the frontline.