The recent Presidential election in the United States, China’s recent acknowledgement of its emissions challenges and other recent developments signal important shifts on climate policy and attitudes around the world.

For the first time, there is near-universal consensus on the degree of threat posed by climate change. We in the Pacific must seize this opportunity to make up lost ground.

However, our enthusiasm is tampered by concern over recent murmurs from some countries that they may need to scale back commitments to emission reductions in light of the global economic crisis.

We in the Pacific certainly sympathise with these difficulties and face them ourselves. Still we know that there is little to gain through postponing effective climate measures and realise that the necessary adjustments will only become more difficult with each passing day.

The first real test will come this month in Poznan, Poland. This critical meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol will be the first since the landmark meeting in Bali in December last year.

The groundwork for a post-Kyoto Protocol mitigation regime will be laid at the meeting.

Parties are also likely to finalise the Protocol’s Adaptation Fund–critical to addressing sea-level rise and other immediate climate impacts in the Pacific and worldwide.

Of course, all this comes not a moment too late for the islands. Our sense of urgency grows daily, witnessed by the discussions of participants at the Pacific Climate Change Roundtable meeting in Apia in October amid dire new warnings about the need to relocate populations of some of the most severely affected islands and atolls.

A new sense of shared purpose for the region emerged from the meeting, but perhaps even more importantly, there was a new determination for the islands to play more of a constructive, proactive role in the international debate than simply serving as poignant examples of climate change’s impacts.

As the moderator of the roundtable stated, “the Pacific shouldn’t just wait with our hands up…we should be hands-on in doing something about climate change.”

I remember well my first attendance at the international climate negotiations in the early 1990s.

Even with the degree of scientific uncertainty at that time, I was struck by the urgency of the calls for action by Pacific islands delegates who warned of the dire consequences for their countries and cultures.

Yet, in nearly 20 years since, we have seen emissions stabilisation targets slip from 1995 to 2000 to whenever might be convenient. Meanwhile, we in the Pacific know all too well that the seas still rise even as the science becomes more airtight (and more alarming). We simply cannot stand by and watch this same trend continue for another 20 years.

The recent energy crisis underlined the vulnerability of the islands in very painful ways, and demonstrated that our current consumption patterns are unsustainable not only with regard to long-term environmental impacts, but by hitting us where it hurts most - our pocketbooks.

As the roundtable stressed, we in the Pacific need to practice what we preach. Our overwhelming reliance on fossil fuels simply must change. Given our vulnerability, we should be assuming a leadership role in moving towards clean energy. Clearly, we stand to gain as much or more than anyone else through such a shift.

For two weeks in December, from Koror to Papeete, the eyes of the Pacific will be on a medieval town in Poland for signs that the world is ready to reverse this trend.

Let’s hope that Poznan stands as a turning point in the history of the planet and the ability of its people to come together to address a grave problem of mutual concern for not just the Pacific but for the world as a whole.