Animated video brings the Pacific's future to life

Lucy Holt(CCAFS)

Ahead of the Paris Climate Conference, a new animated video provides policy-makers with a preview of the Pacific’s future under a changing climate.

What will the Pacific region be like in 2030? Will the islands be economically, socially and culturally connected to the rest of the world or will they stand alone, isolated in the middle of the vast Pacific ocean? Will governments have stepped in to protect the region’s precious natural resources or will extractive industries have wreaked havoc on what little arable land there is, the fragile reef systems and the coastal fisheries? What extra challenges will climate change bring for the region? And, in the midst of these challenges, will the people of the Pacific be able to live the futures they aspire to?

Next week, policy-makers from all around the world will meet at the Paris Climate Conference. There, they will make decisions that will have a resounding impact on the Pacific for years to come. Ahead of the conference, we invite you to preview four different possible futures for the Pacific region, some bright, some bleak.

For policy-makers heading to Paris, these scenarios present an opportunity to test policies and strategies, to ensure that they are future-proofed against a range of possible futures, the good and the bad.

Watch: The future of the Pacific under climate change

These scenarios are not crystal balls. But they were created by a team of policy-makers, researchers, farmers, and political leaders from the region, who spent three days creating four future scenarios for the Pacific region up to 2030. This workshop was convened by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), WorldFish, and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.

Now, the scenarios are available to help policy-makers take control of the region's future. Each scenario will bring its own challenges; identifying these challenges now allows us to design policies at Paris and beyond that can help locals face up to them.

Ultimately, by guiding policy development, the scenarios will help the people of the Pacific take on the challenges of the future and live healthy, prosperous and safe lives.