Mixed start for pre-Cop as just two non-Pacific leaders accept Australian invitation to climate summit

FIJI, 6 OCTOBER 2026 —

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese landed in Fiji on Monday to attend a preparatory meeting for the year‑ending COP31 climate summit in Turkey, saying it was “important that Pacific voices are heard”.

The meeting, unusually staged in the Pacific, was intended to draw global attention to the climate risks faced by low‑lying island nations. Australian officials hoped the event would encourage national leaders to visit Tuvalu, a vulnerable atoll nation, before the main summit in Antalya, Turkey, later in the year.

However, only 14 leaders agreed to travel to Tuvalu on Tuesday, and just two – Timor‑Leste’s former president José Ramos‑Horta and Mauritius’ former prime minister Navin Ramgoolam – came from outside the Pacific region.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen confirmed that the Tuvalu delegation would be joined by European Union climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the heads of the Asian Development Bank and the Green Climate Fund, UN climate chief Simon Stiell, Turkey’s incoming COP president Murat Kurum and a team of international journalists.

Opposition energy and emissions reduction spokesperson Dan Tehan criticised the low turnout, calling the Fiji conference a “waste of taxpayers’ money”, a “farce” and Bowen’s “vanity project”.

Albanese reiterated the significance of the gathering, stating, “It is important that Pacific voices are heard, because the Pacific is the frontline of action on climate change.

For many of the nations represented by leaders here it is literally a threat to their very existence, which is why the world must act.” Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, speaking at a welcome event, urged the audience to view the Pacific not with sympathy but as a “bellwether, indicating the scale of the challenges that will come”.

He noted that the Pacific Ocean covers about a third of the Earth and serves as the “engine room of the world’s weather”, warning that a warming ocean and an emerging El Niño could cause “havoc in every country”.

The Australian government has come under domestic scrutiny for approving large new coal and gas projects, and for not yet rejecting the largest coal‑mine development in New South Wales history, which received state approval last week. Bowen told journalists that the transition away from fossil fuels “is to build more renewable energy to replace the need for fossil fuels” and called for greater electrification as part of the pathway to decarbonisation.

Fiji’s environment minister Lynda Tabuya said the country’s objectives at the upcoming COP31 were to keep the 1.5 °C warming limit within reach, to unlock “faster, fairer” access to climate finance for developing nations, and to place ocean health at the centre of climate action.

The UN Environment Programme, in a warning issued last month, said the world was on track to overshoot the 1.5 °C target of the Paris Agreement, noting that each fraction of a degree of additional warming would intensify extreme weather, glacier melt, ecosystem loss and coastal submersion.

The pre‑COP meeting in Fiji therefore concluded with a mixed record: while it succeeded in assembling a sizable gathering of regional stakeholders and securing high‑level international representation, the limited attendance of non‑Pacific leaders highlighted the challenges of translating symbolic outreach into broader diplomatic engagement ahead of the main COP31 negotiations in Turkey.

Related: Anthony Albanese · Fiji