SUVA, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- The threat climate change poses to the entire world is the greatest collective challenge humanity has ever faced, said Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama on Monday.
Speaking at the opening of the 4th Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union 2018 media summit on climate change and Pacific Media partnership conference in Nadi, Fiji's third largest city, Bainimarama, who is also president of the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP23), said that natural disasters posed a particular threat to vulnerable nations and in the Asia Pacific. Cyclones and droughts posed an acute risk to people, and development through rising seas swamping arable land, acidity and bleaching destroying coral reefs, or changes to agriculture threatening food security.
"It is an unprecedented crisis that we must face together -- every single person on earth helping to reverse the damage to our planet that we have all inflicted with our life styles," he said. "As my team and I preside over the global negotiations to reduce net carbon emissions to zero as soon as possible, you in the media have a critical role to play."
He urged the media to focus on what they could do -- individually and collectively -- to assist their own nations, the region and the world to confront this challenge head on.
Bainimarama said that it was vital to tell the stories that need to be told and to generate the action that needs to be taken.
He said that the media had the power to make a genuine difference to highlight the urgency of concerted action at every level to avert catastrophe and to clean economies.
While pointing out that there were plenty stories out there about the negative effects of climate change, he called on the media to think outside the box in their storytelling, to fire people's imaginations about the positive stories of what is possible if humans altered their mindsets from doom and gloom to work together effectively as people and as nations to meet this challenge.
Bainimarama said that great things are happening in the global quest to make the transition from dirty energy such as fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy such as hydro, solar and wind.
"The technology is already emerging such as battery storage to ensure adequate energy supply and still make the cuts in carbon emissions that are needed to meet the most ambitious target of the Paris Agreement to limit the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above that of the pre-industrial age. The challenge the world faces is to scale up that technology with a lot more investment to make it more affordable and more widely available. And especially in developing countries such as our own," he said.
Bainimarama said Fijians are making it a priority with the assistance of development partners to bring clean, renewable energy to as many Fijians as possible.
He said that the media needed to motivate governments and people into action and help get the message out as people in the Asia Pacific are all in the same canoe.
