The next major United Nations meeting on climate change, known as COP29, is about to get underway in Baku, Azerbaijan. These annual meetings are the key international summits as the world attempts to address the unfolding climate crisis.

While the Australian and Tuvalu governments have been highly visible in the negotiation of the Falepili Union Treaty, the lack of consultation with Tuvaluan people in both Australia and Tuvalu before the treaty was signed was widely criticized.

Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East make us forget that climate change has also long since claimed its victims. Its geographical effects are inevitably fueling social stress, political tensions and even military violence.

This week, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel exporters went to a meeting of island states strongly affected by human-induced climate change.

The devastating calamities India has faced over the past few months certainly seem to suggest that climate change is already manifesting and has come to alter, if not tear asunder, human lives.

On Saturday 13th July, Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Faleti Teo met with the Tuvalu diaspora community in Brisbane, the largest Tuvaluan community in Australiam, to discuss the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union Treaty.