The Pacific has opened its home at the COP31 climate talks in Antalya, Turkiye, with the official launch of the Moana Blue Pacific Pavilion and Pacific Delegation Office on Tuesday evening. The pavilion, managed by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) with support from the governments of Australia and New Zealand, will host a two-week programme of side events, talanoa sessions and exhibitions until the conference ends on 20 November.

The opening was led by Lynda Tabuya, Fiji's Minister for Information, Environment and Climate Change and chair of the Pacific Small Island Developing States, alongside Chris Bowen, Australia's Minister for Climate Change and Energy and COP31 President of Negotiations, Stuart Coleman, New Zealand's Ambassador for Climate Change, and Sefanaia Nawadra, SPREP Director General.

Ocean at the heart of the Pacific message

Tabuya told the gathering that the Pacific would bring its heart to the negotiations, adding: "The heart of the Pacific is the ocean." She said the ocean was still struggling to get onto the formal agenda even though glaciers and forests had made it, and urged delegates to fight for it together. Bowen said placing the pavilion at the centre of the venue, beside the pavilions of the COP presidencies, was deliberate, and recalled that the Pacific had insisted in Paris that two degrees of warming was not good enough. "We must reinforce that commitment and push again for that commitment," he said, adding that only 0.2 per cent of the world's climate finance goes to small island developing states for adaptation. "That has to change."

Prayer, performance and film at the launch

The evening included performances by Matavai Pacific Cultural Arts and This Is Our Home Band, with prayer and devotion led by Reverend Faaimata Havea Hiliau. On the first morning of COP31, Uniting Church in Australia President Reverend Charissa Suli led morning devotions and blessed the pavilion, praying that it would be a place of welcome, wisdom and courageous conversation. The launch closed with a screening of the poem "Breathe 1.5" and the trailer for Pacific Rising, a 75-minute documentary premiering at COP31 that follows communities across Tuvalu, Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, the Marshall Islands and Samoa. Nawadra said the pavilion began at COP24 in Katowice, Poland, as the Pacific and Koronivia Pavilion, and thanked New Zealand and Australia for their support. With 198 parties attending COP31, including 14 Pacific countries, the pavilion gives Pacific negotiators a dedicated space to prepare and coordinate, and a platform to press for the ocean to become a formal item on the COP agenda.