Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo took to a stage in Apia, Samoa, on Thursday morning to say something pointed. Planned fossil fuel expansions in nations such as Australia represented, for his nation, a “death sentence”. The phrase “death sentence”, Teo said, had not been chosen lightly. He followed up with this: “We will not sit quietly and allow others to determine our fate.”
Teo chose the moment for this broadside well – on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), attended by both King Charles and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The speech came at the launch of a new report on moves by the “big three” Commonwealth states – the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia – to expand fossil fuel exports.
These three states make up just 6% of the population of the Commonwealth’s 56 nations, but account for over 60% of the carbon emissions generated through extraction since 1990, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative report shows.
