Telling climate change stories for people and planet

A new online platform established under the leadership of the Fijian Presidency to the 23d Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will allow State parties to the Convention, civil society organizations and the public, to take stock of progress made to mitigate and adapt to climate change and share their stories about the impacts of climate change and their efforts to address them.

The Talanoa Dialogue platform seeks to emulate the traditional concept of talanoa originating from Fiji and the larger Pacific region that describes a process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue for the collective good.

At an event held in Geneva, Nazhat Khan, Permanent Representative of Fiji to UN Office in Geneva and Chief Negotiator of the Fijian COP23 Presidency, presented the online platform for the talanoa dialogue. She described the larger process of talanoa consultations that Fiji, in collaboration with Poland as the COP24 presidency, would engage in over the course of 2018.

Participants at the event, which was co-organized by the Geneva Pledge for Human Rights in Climate Action, the Permanent Mission of Fiji and the UN Human Rights Office, discussed the human rights outcomes of COP23, and the role the forthcoming talanoa dialogue could play in empowering people and highlighting the human face of climate change.

Geneva Pledge members, including Fiji and Costa Rica, have committed since 2015 to facilitate the exchange of expertise and best practices between human rights and climate experts. They emphasized the need to continue to build collective capacity to deliver effective rights-based climate action including through promotion of human rights at the UNFCCC.

At COP23 last year, States parties to the UNFCCC took the first steps to operationalizing a dialogue in 2018 to take stock of their progress to reach the long-term goal of limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

This dialogue, the talanoa dialogue, has now begun. It will be centred around three questions: Where are we now? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?

The online platform for the talanoa dialogue will be open for submissions throughout 2018. It offers the chance for everyone to reflect on how they can make a difference in the collective effort to prevent the worst impacts of climate change from harming those who can least afford it.

2 February 2018