Welcome to Pacific Ocean - Pacific Climate Conference

The second Pacific Climate Change Conference will be held at Te Papa National Museum, Wellington

Climate change is already changing the nature of the weather and the seasonal climate, and raising sea levels across the globe. Left unchecked, climate change presents huge risks for food security, water availability, and habitability. It is the number one problem facing humanity.

How climate change affects the oceans, and the life within the oceans, is central to the future of the planet. Holding the vast majority of the heat in the climate system, and home to a vast array of biodiversity, the global oceans hold the key to the course of climate change for centuries to come.

Nowhere is climate change, and ocean change, a more urgent issue than across the Pacific, home to many low-lying island nations and sensitive to large swings in climate from year to year. The second Pacific Climate Change Conference hosted by  Victoria University of Wellington and SPREP will bring together a broad range of voices on climate change, from the science to the impacts to the policy and public implications. As with the first Conference in 2016, we will include a broad range of sectors, including the arts, science communities, Pacific communities and activists, business sector, faith communities, NGOs, health, and members of the public, to provide a rich exchange of diverse ideas on how to tackle this biggest of problems.

One component of the Conference will be a session devoted to mitigation action under the Paris Agreement on climate change. Representatives of nations across the Pacific will be asked to report on steps being taken at the national level to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow the rate of climate change.