Ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum, a group of esteemed Pacific leaders has urged Australia to show support for the region by abandoning plans for new fossil fuel generation.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will travel to Fiji next week for the annual PIF leaders meeting, which brings together 18 heads of government from the blue continent.
The overriding and existential issue is climate change, given the human, environmental and economic risk of catastrophe without swift greenhouse gas emissions reductions from the developed world.
Serving Pacific leaders have been clear with their disappointment with Australian efforts to combat climate change.
In December last year, Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said Australia had a "dangerous addiction to coal," before welcoming Mr Albanese's election, hoping he will "put the climate first".
Past leaders are also adding their shoulders to the regional effort.
Former leaders from Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Palau have co-signed a statement asking countries to improve their emissions-cutting effort.
"The latest assessments are clear: global emissions must be halved during this decade. There is no room for new coal and gas," the statement said.
Mr Albanese has set Australia's emissions reduction target at 43 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030, below the amount the United Nations says needs to occur worldwide to restrict cataclysmic climate change.
The Pacific elders - including Enele Sopoaga of Tuvalu, the 2019 PIF chair, Anote Tong of Kiribati, Hilda Heine of Marshall Islands and Palau's Tommy Remengesau - have endorsed a new report from Australia's Climate Council, released on Friday.
Lead author Wesley Morgan said a failure to adopt climate pledges in line with what would restrict global warming to 1.5C would hit Australia's standing in the Pacific.
"Australia's failure to act on climate change undermined our national security - nowhere is that more evident than the Pacific," he said.
"The Pacific Islands Forum is a crucial moment for the Albanese government to reset relations with strategically important Pacific nations, and prove itself as a climate leader.
"Australia will need to show Pacific countries that it is serious about climate action, both by cutting emissions at home and working with the rest of the Pacific to drive global cuts in emissions this decade."
The report makes plain the disastrous efforts for the Pacific without a course correction on emissions.
At current warming trends, the blue continent will endure more destructive cyclones, coastal flooding, the loss of 99 per cent of coral reefs, all of which will hit food and water security and precarious economies.
"The latest science strongly affirms what Pacific island countries and communities have long known: that climate change is the single greatest threat to their future," Dr Morgan writes.
The Pacific elders put it more bluntly, saying low-lying states are at risk of "annihilation".
"All Pacific countries will face severe and irreversible impacts that will wreak havoc in island communities," they write.
Mr Albanese and New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern, who will also attend the PIF leaders summit from 12-14 July, are expected to come under intense pressure to make new climate commitments in Fiji.
