The Guardian-Pacific Islands Forum to focus on climate and China after Solomon Islands deal with Beijing

Sitiveni Rabuka, Anthony Albanese and Mark Brown

Pacific island leaders are descending on the Cook Islands for the region’s most important annual political gathering, with the talks likely to be dominated by the climate crisis and growing US-China rivalry.

The Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) is an 18-member grouping of 16 Pacific nations, including Australia and New Zealand, plus two French territories.

This year, Solomon Islands – which has drawn closer to China since signing a security agreement in 2022 – is reported to be sending a delegation led by the foreign minister, Jeremiah Manele, not the prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare.

Sogavare travelled to Beijing in July to sign a raft of deals including a new police cooperation agreement and said in September that the US should stop “lecturing” Pacific leaders.

The Cook Islands – roughly halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii – is hosting this year’s annual leaders’ meeting under the theme Our Voices, Our Choices and Our Pacific Way.

The event runs from Monday until Friday with most of the events held on the island of Rarotonga. However, leaders will travel to Aitutaki for crucial talks on Thursday.

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The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is expected to arrive in the Cook Islands midweek to join the talks after he wraps up his trip to China.

Pacific Elders’ Voice, a group of former leaders across the region, has called on Pif to postpone a decision on whether to support Australia’s bid to co-host the 2026 UN climate conference in partnership with the Pacific.

One member of the group, the former Tuvalu prime minister Enele Sopoaga, said the leaders’ summit “must unanimously call on Australia to stop approving Pacific-killing coal and gas projects”.

“We reiterate that the Pacific Islands Forum should not rubber stamp Australia’s bid and that any endorsement must be based on commitments from Australia to take tangible climate action in the short term and commit to a fossil fuel phase-out in the near future,” Sopoaga said.

Vanuatu and Tuvalu have been leading a push for Pif leaders to endorse “a global, just and equitable phase-out of coal, oil and gas”.

But the prime minister of Fiji, Sitiveni Rabuka, appeared to express a pragmatic view during a visit to Australia last month. When asked about whether Australia needed to do more on climate, Rabuka said: “We’re realistic about our demands.”

Rabuka is expected to use the event to promote his concept of designating the Pacific as a “zone of peace” – a nod to the region’s desire to avoid being drawn into an escalation of tensions between the US and China.

The week’s Pif event is also expected to draw many delegates from further afield, including the US, the UK and Germany.

Pif has 21 dialogue partners including China, India, Japan and the US.

The US delegation will be led by its ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who is expected to “underscore the importance for all nations to support the international system”.

The director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands Program, Meg Keen, said leaders would probably assert the Pacific’s right to set its own direction “and push back at geostrategic priorities trumping Pacific development priorities”.

“There is huge diversity in this region, development priorities differ as do associations with major powers. The challenge for Pacific countries is to maintain strong regional cohesion,” Keen said.

“Where there are differences, such as seabed mining, major power recognition and development priorities, they need to maintain the flexibility to respect differences and build on the capacity to make the right decisions for each sovereign country.”

Keen said the top priority in the Pacific was climate action and the mobilisation of finances “to adapt and thrive in the face of the climate catastrophe”.

“This forum, Pacific island countries will be pushing not only for better access to global and donor finances to deal with the growing gaps, but also to broaden and diversify their options through more access to private sector and philanthropic societies,” she said.

Australia, she said, would use the meetings to demonstrate “its commitment to the Pacific family and to regionalism”.

Keen said one Australian priority was to gain support for the “Pacific Quality Infrastructure Principles” – a push to ensure that infrastructure investments advance local content, responsible borrowing, sound project oversight and private sector opportunities.

“Australia sees these principles as the strength of traditional donors like itself, and the weakness of Chinese infrastructure projects,” Keen said.

The US has been racing to reopen embassies and deepen links with Pacific countries in the wake of the China-Solomon Islands security pact.

The president, Joe Biden, welcomed Pacific leaders to the White House in September and announced further economic aid while declaring that “a great deal of the history of our world will be written across the Pacific over the coming years”.

At the same time, Biden announced formal US recognition of the Cook Islands and Niue as sovereign states. Sogavare skipped that summit.

The incoming prime minister of New Zealand, Christopher Luxon, is not expected to attend this week’s gathering in the Cook Islands, given that he is focused on coalition talks to form government.

He will be represented by his party’s spokesperson for foreign affairs, Gerry Brownlee, and the outgoing deputy prime minister, Carmel Sepuloni.