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October 2025
We are pleased to share the latest news, events and exciting developments within, and relevant to, the INPACC Hub community. The collated items are just a snapshot of the wealth and breadth of activity taking place across the region and we thank those in the network who have submitted content. We welcome your contributions for future issues!
YECAP's Youth Advancing Effective Climate Governance at All Levels Campaign
Coinciding with the International Day of Democracy on 15 September, the Youth Empowerment in Climate Action Platform (YECAP) launched its campaign: “Youth Advancing Effective Climate Governance at All Levels.”
This campaign celebrates youth as climate leaders, innovators, and equal development partners, spotlighting youth-led solutions and advancing youth engagement in climate policy.
Please find the campaign highlights below:
- 🎬 Thematic Video – Featuring stories of youth members from the Regional Youth Parliament on Climate Action (RYPCA) who are shaping climate governance across Asia and the Pacific
- 📄 RYPCA Dialogue Outcome Statement – Youth-led insights and policy recommendations from 15 young leaders across 12 countries
- ✍️ Blog Post – Exploring how the digital conversation tool Ekota is used to gather youth insights and inform climate policy
Internal Migration and Climate Resilience in India: Are Current Policies and Interventions Providing Adaptive Social Protection? This new report from the Indian Institute for Human Settlements reviews 94 interventions at the national, state and city levels to assess whether current development, labour, and climate change policies and programmes recognise and address the needs of internal migrants. It also evaluates whether these interventions help build the adaptive capacities of people on the move. The analysis uses the Adaptive Social Protection framework—which integrates social protection, climate change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction—to examine whether social protection systems in a climate-affected India are flexible and responsive enough to support migrants.
University of Melbourne and Pacific Climate Change Centre secure AUD 500K to enhance climate, energy and health resilience across Small Island Developing States The University of Melbourne, in partnership with the Pacific Climate Change Centre (PCCC), hosted by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), has once again secured over half a million dollars in funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to improve climate, energy and health resilience. This is the third consecutive round of Australia Awards funding the program has secured and, this round, will select fellows from the Caribbean, as well as the Indo-Pacific region, with the collaboration of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre.
Young Farmers Cultivate Hope and Sustainability in Taveuni In the quiet farming community of Vuna, on the southern tip of Taveuni, Fiji, a new wave of young farmers is redefining what it means to cultivate the land and a future. They call themselves the Kevin Young Farmers Alumni (KYFA), a group of 14 young men from Kanacea and Vuna, most of them graduates of the Tutu Rural Training Centre.
Helena Varkkey appointed to Prince Claus Chair As of 1 September 2025, INPACC Hub Steering Committee member Dr. Helena Varkkey has begun a two-year role as the Prince Claus Chair in Equity and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam on Transboundary Haze Governance in Southeast Asia. Dr Varkkey will be a part of the project Water, Securitisation Anxieties and Border Imaginaries which aims to compare the lived experiences and imaginaries of those crossing and living in securitized water borders in Sri Lanka, Central America, Eastern Mediterranean, the Southern Caucasus and the Sulu Sea in the Philippines.
Shifting Grounds: Telling the Climate Migration Story This new publication is a guide that supports communicators in development organisations, think tanks, and the media in navigating the complex and often overlooked connections between climate change and internal migration. Drawing on field research, expert interviews, and narrative analysis, the guide covers links between climate change-related events such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves, and internal migration. It offers easy-to-understand explanations of key terms, guidelines for ethical and accurate storytelling, and data sources and tools. Designed as a resource to build responsible storytelling on rural to urban migration in the context of climate change, the guide highlights the importance of recognising migration-as-adaptation.
More news from SPREP
Do you have content for sharing in our newsletter? Please email enquiries@inpacchub.org with a link to your story/opportunity/event.
Member publications
Upcoming events
10-21 November 2025
COP30 Brasil: 30th Conference of the Parties for the UNFCCC, Belem, Brazil
19 November 2025
Conversations in Planetary Health Seminar: Green vision: eye care in the era of planetary health, online
29-30 November 2025
Global Youth Environment Assembly (Youth Environment Assembly 2025), UNEP Headquarters, Nairobi, & online
An optimistic paradox – Australia owes Tuvalu climate justice, according to its own standard - by Tola Beavis
Tola Beavis (pictured) is an Honours student at The University of Melbourne, majoring in Politics and International Studies. Her thesis analyses the normative implications of the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union. Her research interests are climate justice and development, and she aspires to work in academia. Through her work, she wishes to exploit political opportunities to advance a fairer and better world.
Australia and Türkiye remain locked in competition, with both countries vying for the opportunity to host COP31 in 2026. Australia proposes to co-host it with its Pacific family – whose rallying cries for Australia to act faster on climate change have been all but missed.
It’s no secret the Australian government is a climate laggard, and that its climate credentials are lacking – famously winning so many “fossil of the day” trophies in 2021, that a new award was coined: the “colossal fossil” award. An honour bestowed upon the most shameless climate wrecker.
To make this point: the Australian government continues to approve new fossil fuel exploration and production ventures and has increased its subsidies to fossil fuel producers and major users by approximately 30% between 2022/23 and 2023/2024. Furthermore, it has released no comprehensive plan to phase-out fossil fuels. Current government policy – to reduce emissions to 43% below 2005 levels – is not in line with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5-degree limit, nor is Australia likely to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050.
It’s been over a year since Australia signed the Falepili Union with Tuvalu, a Pacific Island nation, between Australia and Hawaii, with an estimated population of 9,800 people. By 2040 it is likely to be uninhabitable, due to climate-change induced rising sea-levels. The Falepili Union is a security pact that makes three promises: security guarantees from Australia should Tuvalu ask for them, an increase in climate adaptation funds, and most famously a climate migration visa for Tuvaluans to relocate to Australia.
In my research, I asked, what standard does the Falepili Union set? and, according to this standard, is the Australian government failing? Subsequently, is there indeed a paradox between the Australian government supporting the fossil fuel industry and engaging in this kind of climate diplomacy? If so, might this paradox hang some normative demands on the Australian government to phase-out fossil fuels and commit to mitigating climate change?
I applied discourse analysis to several policy documents, press conferences and of course the treaty itself. I found that a close look at the Falepili Union’s logic is illuminating in several key respects.
The extent to which there is a paradox is limited by several competing logics within the discourse. The discourse is befitting of traditional security discourses in so far as it privileges traditional concerns like sovereignty, the economy and international stability. However, it is redeemed by the following illogical opening: Australia commits to respecting and upholding Tuvalu’s sovereignty, and yet Australia’s support of its fossil fuel industry actively imperils Tuvalu’s territorial integrity.
Furthermore, the Falepili Union articulates a standard built on Falepili, a Tuvaluan concept which means neighbourliness, trust, mutual respect. And so it seems Australia shows some regard for Tuvaluan citizens, and in this way demonstrates a cosmopolitan sensibility, that is, a concern for citizens outside its own borders. If Australia accepts this special responsibility towards Tuvaluans, as demonstrated by its emphatic appeals to family and neighbourhood, then it is illogical of the government to sustain both the fossil fuel industry and these promises.
Moreover, the appeals to Falepili throughout the discourse highlight Australia’s geopolitical ambition to ensure the amicability of the region, and more to the point, that Australia is the region’s preferred security partner over China. Although this rationale may seem to typify traditional security logics, I find that Australia may be promising more than it realises through its exaggerated reverence of Falepili. It at least must answer the question: how, in the spirit of Falepili, can it reasonably justify its ongoing emissions and lacklustre climate action?
However, dishearteningly, when the discourse focuses on building Tuvaluan ecosystem’s resistance to the effects of climate change, it recommends adapting the ecosystem rather than challenging the practices that put it at risk. For example, Australia promises to reclaim land, and expand Funafuti’s land by approximately 6% in collaboration with the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation project. Therefore, it seems that sustainable development and resilience initiatives leave the fossil fuel industry unchallenged by advancing solutions which suggest nature is infinitely malleable.
I find this last point is irreconcilable with the optimism of the previous points. Nevertheless, I argue the Falepili Union articulates a standard built on respect for sovereignty and is imbued with a cosmopolitan sensibility and logic. Therefore, by its own standard, the Australian government ought to phase-out fossil fuels now.
Accelerating transformative climate resilient development and igniting change for a sustainable future in the Indo-Pacific.
