Taku Pakasoa is Tuvaluan for the strength found in unity and acting together, and on 6 October it became the name of a declaration. Leaders came to Tuvalu on 5 and 6 October to stand on the atolls themselves, then ministers met in Fiji until the 8th for the Pacific's pre COP, hosted by Fiji and Australia, with more than four thousand people from over a hundred countries joining the Vale Ni Vanua knowledge exchange around it. Twenty seven governments signed, among them Australia, New Zealand, France, Indonesia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Türkiye, which holds the presidency of COP31, alongside Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and the rest of the Pacific family. Much of the text is the familiar arithmetic of climate talks: hold warming to one and a half degrees, triple renewable power by 2030, get the 2035 national plans in. But four of its sixteen points are about the sea, and they are the ones we wanted to tell you about.
They say the ocean matters to Pacific, Indian and Atlantic nations alike; that the sea is warming and its life needs protecting; that keeping warming under one and a half degrees is also how you keep the great ocean currents turning; and that ocean science deserves a seat at the table. In the same week Fiji launched a national plan to protect and restore its coral reefs, and Türkiye confirmed it will work towards an Antalya Ocean Declaration when the talks open on 9 November, with Australia leading the negotiations. A declaration is words, and the Antalya one is not written yet; we will tell you what it says when it exists. What is already real is that a nation of about eleven thousand people, whose sea boundaries this text reaffirms whatever the tide does, gathered the world on its shore and sent it to Türkiye with the ocean written in. Two young Australians travel with the presidency to hold it to that: Kal Glanznig, the Youth Ocean Advocate, and Sally Higgins, a cattle farmer and the Youth Climate Champion.
Sources and links
Our short take: from the COP31 Pacific pre COP pages for the Taku Pakasoa Declaration and the Pre COP Launchpad (October 2026), with the PINA report of 7 October 2026. Photographs: as credited in captions.
- COP31 Pacific, the Taku Pakasoa Declaration The sixteen points, the twenty seven endorsers, the four ocean points.
- COP31 Pacific, Pre COP Launchpad Dates, the Tuvalu visit, the Antalya Ocean Declaration commitment, Fiji's reef plan, the Vale Ni Vanua figures.
- UNFCCC, COP31 The talks, Antalya, from 9 November.
