Pacific sailors are used to being away from home for months. But this voyage unexpectedly turned out to involve a lot of drama and almost epic frustration. When the pandemic hit, seafarers found themselves stranded almost everywhere. Some were stuck on ships beyond the maximum end of their contracts waiting for fresh crews to arrive and replace them; when they didn’t, the sailors continued working without a break, while others couldn’t go home because of travel restrictions around the globe.

On February 23, the UN Security Council (UNSC) held a high-level open debate on the topic of climate and security. The meeting, convened by the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom, was the latest in a series of open debates and Arria-formula sessions set to define the role of the Council in addressing threats to international security posed by climate change. Despite a decade-long discussion, the UNSC is still divided on a series of conceptual and procedural issues that, as it will be shown in this article, prevent it from defining its role in relation to climate change.

At the end of February, the government of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati announced that it planned to collaborate with China in developing Natovatu land bought by the Kiribati government in 2014 on the Fijian island of Vanua Levu. In the light of increasing attempts by the People’s Republic of China to expand its influence in Pacific Island Countries, this announcement was met with some concern on the international stage. It was interpreted in the context of the growing geostrategic power rivalry in the region.

That the peoples of the Pacific continue to speak with one loud voice when it comes to climate action and climate justice is of utmost importance not only for the PICs themselves, but also for the rest of the world. This voice carries significant weight in the international climate discourse and politics. We desperately need it.

The “state of the planet is broken”. This was the UN Secretary General’s succinct summation of the situation humankind finds itself in today. In his speech of 2 December on the global climate change emergency and the dramatic deterioration of the environment, he listed some of the most important facts which illustrate the severity of the current climate and environmental crisis: “The past decade was the hottest in human history”; “Carbon dioxide levels are still at record highs – and rising”; “We are headed for a thundering rise of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius this century”; “As always, the impacts fall most heavily on the world’s most vulnerable people. Those who have done the least to cause the problem are suffering the most”.

COVID-19 has changed the global landscape. One of the side effects is that air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced as a result of restrictions on economic activity and the movement of people around the world. This has led to an advocacy to create a more sustainable and healthy society through the recovery process, in other words, a "green recovery”.