Pacific island leaders insist climate change, not China, will top the agenda when they meet in Tuvalu this month as western-aligned nations push to curb Beijing's growing influence in the region.

Once regarded as a sleepy backwater of the diplomatic world, the islands are now a hotbed of aid projects and charm offensives as anxiety over China's presence grows.

Australia has labelled its campaign the Pacific Step-Up, New Zealand has the Pacific Reset and Britain the Pacific Uplift, while the United States, Japan, and France have also intensified their efforts to court the region.

But local leaders attending the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in Tuvalu from August 13-16 are wary their concerns will be sidelined if they become pawns in a wider power struggle.

The 16-member forum mainly consists of small island nations, along with Papua New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand.

PIF secretary-general Dame Meg Taylor said the forum, whose members collectively refer to themselves as the Blue Pacific, was at a pivotal moment in its history.

"While we are the subject of the geopolitical manoeuvring and strategies of others, the Blue Pacific collective remains focused on charting our own destiny," she said.

The primary concern for island leaders -- many of whom live in low-lying nations threatened by rising seas -- is climate change.

In a pointed message to Australia's conservative government, Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga has warned Canberra's step-up strategy will fail unless it finally takes meaningful action to address the issue.

"They know very well that we will not be happy as a partner, to move forward, unless they are serious," he said.

- Base fears -

The Pacific islands saw intense fighting during World War II and displays of power in the Cold War, including nuclear tests by the United States and France.

But they dropped off the radar for major powers as other regions took priority, a fact recently acknowledged by Britain's High Commissioner to New Zealand Laura Clarke.

"Quite frankly we stepped back too much from our Pacific friends and partners," she said. "We are now beginning to put that balance right."

China has been active in the Pacific for well over a decade and, though it still ranks far behind Australia as the region's biggest aid donor, there is growing discomfort over its interest in an area Canberra regards as its sphere of influence.

For China, a presence in the region provides access to assets such as fisheries, as well as giving Beijing the opportunity to try to further diplomatically isolate Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade state.

But other regional heavyweights, particularly Australia, fear the ultimate aim is to set up a naval base in the Pacific which would dramatically increase Beijing's military footprint in the area.

Such a move would potentially negate the geographic remoteness that provides Australia and New Zealand with a valuable defence buffer.

Whether real or imagined, the possibility has long dominated strategic thinking among Australia and its allies about the islands, said Wesley Morgan, a lecturer in international affairs at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.

"This tendency to see the Pacific island countries as would-be naval bases and to view them through that lens of maritime competition has done Pacific island countries a disservice," he said.

"These countries are significant players in global politics in their own right," he added, pointing out it was the islands that helped put climate change on the international agenda.

- Lip service -

Morgan said Pacific leaders regarded climate change as a greater security risk than China and expected those operating in the region to respect their concerns.

He said there was particular disappointment that Australia -- led by climate-sceptic Prime Minister Scott Morrison -- was dismissive about an issue its neighbours see as an existential threat.

While Canberra had paid lip service to environmental concerns, Morgan said island nations were acutely aware that, in real terms, it was set to miss Paris emissions targets and had recently approved construction of a major new coal mine.

Pacific leaders have become increasingly critical of Canberra ahead of the Tuvalu meeting and Morgan said they were unlikely to prioritise Canberra's security concerns regarding China when their own were not being taken seriously.

"As long as countries like Australia fail to take adequate steps to tackle climate change it will undermine their attempts to win over the Pacific," he said.

Albanian mussels suffocate as global warming takes toll
Butrint, Albania (AFP) Aug 4, 2019 - Violet Mihasi doesn't hide her concern while working on her barge on a salt lagoon in the southern tip of Albania, her mussels clinging to ropes dangled in the water.

The mussel farmer fears another poor harvest this year of the particularly fleshy mussel, dubbed the "Queen of Butrint", which is suffocating as temperatures rise.

The warmer waters of the Butrint Lagoon on the Ionian coast, not far from the Greek border, also encourage parasites that starve the once thriving bivalves of oxygen.

To rid the mussels of the microorganisms, the farmers pull the ropes out of the water, allowing them to "breathe" on the surface for two days before plunging them back in, Mihasi says.

Nevertheless, harvests have still significantly dropped over the last three decades.

In 1990, some 6,000 tonnes of mussels were pulled from the ropes dangling from the barges, according to agriculture ministry figures.

Nowadays, in a good year, the haul for the lagoon's around 60 mussel farmers is barely half that.

And last year, it dropped to 2,000 tonnes, when water temperatures were stuck at more than 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit).

Half of the young mussels, known as spat, which were immersed on the ropes at the start of the summer, died in 2018.

In the three previous years, the devastation was even worse, at closer to 90 percent, one of the Butrint mussel farmers told AFP.

The deadly temperature threshold has already been reached this summer, although July storms brought some relief.

"When the heatwave suffocates the mussels... everything is lost," says Mihasi, in her fifties, with a sun-weathered face.

- A question of survival -

After the mussels mature on the ropes, they are hoisted up with old rusty winches.

For Mihasi's hard work under a blazing sun -- warded off by an old parasol and often eased by a strong wind -- the mother of two earns slightly less than 500 euros ($560) a month, about 100 euros above the average for Albania.

But her income all depends on the success of the year's haul and she and other producers worry about the future amid dire warnings by experts.

Roland Kristo, deputy agriculture minister and a biologist, told AFP that the fall in the mussel population was "a direct consequence of global warming, which deteriorates the quality of the water and reduces the solubility of the oxygen" vital for the mussels.

For Edmond Panariti, a toxicologist from the capital, Tirana, global warming now threatens the "very survival" of the Butrint mussel.

"The rise in water temperatures in recent years has aggravated the problems for the ecosystem," he told AFP.

It's not the first setback for the producers.

The Butrint mussel farmers remain under a 1994 European Union export ban over distribution problems, but they still find ready customers among Albania's markets and restaurateurs.

- Defenceless -

A single prolonged heatwave can be fatal for the spat.

"For the past three or four years, more than half of the annual production has been destroyed in a few days," said Alket Shabani, a 27-year-old worker on a mussel boat.

If the mercury continues to rise this summer, "everything will be over," he said.

His 67-year-old boss Hysni Mane, who also runs a seafood restaurant, noted that the mussels are defenceless against the heat: "They cannot move to find another cooler place."

The problems are exacerbated, he said, by an upset in the exchange of seawater with that of the lagoon and nearby cooler freshwater sources, as well as rising sea levels and precipitation regimes, which he blamed on global warming.

On this summer's hottest days, temperatures reached nearly 30 degrees Celsius on the surface, penetrating as much as two and a half metres (eight feet) into the water, said Kristo, the deputy agriculture minister.

Panariti added: "Even a water temperature of 24 to 25 degrees C is fatal for the mussels because they struggle to survive and reproduce under the stress."

- Oxygenise the lagoon -

Anila Shallari, a geographer at Paul Valery University in Montpellier, France, said: "Microorganisms that degrade organic substances become very active and consume all the available oxygen."

The authorities have vowed to tackle the problem but are constrained by a lack of resources in the poor Balkan country.

To cool the lagoon's water and help "oxygenise" it, engineers would have to dredge the channel linking it to the sea.

They must also increase the flow of cold water from the Bistrica river -- slowed by two small hydropower plants upstream -- into the lagoon.

In April, they opened the dams' floodgates but this was only a temporary solution, mussel farmers say.

The government is also fighting the EU ban so that exports -- more lucrative than domestic sales -- can resume.

Albanian restaurants pay one to two euros for a kilo of mussels, but if they are smuggled to nearby Greece they can fetch up to seven euros a kilo, said mussel farmer Roland Hysi.

But, as temperatures threaten the mussels trying to survive in the lagoon's depths, there is little the farmers can do but anxiously keep checking the daily weather forecasts.

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Palau tells Australia to step-up on climate
Koror, Palau (AFP) Aug 1, 2019
Palau has called on Australia to do more to tackle climate change, saying the Pacific's "big brother" has an obligation to act on an issue that threatens the existence of its small island neighbours. Australia has launched a diplomatic push it calls the Pacific "step-up" to boost its influence and counter growing Chinese influence in the region. But Palau President Tommy Remengesau said Canberra's lack of action on climate change risked damaging its standing among Pacific leaders. "I share t ... read more