Put the ocean at the center of COP31

For more than 30 years, Pacific island countries have issued the same warning at the annual UN climate change conference: the warming ocean threatens not just food and energy security but global survival itself. And almost every year, our warning has been treated as a regional problem, a challenge confined to remote small islands and thus not warranting more than lip service from international leaders.

I wish I could say we were wrong. Instead, the climate devastation unfolding before our eyes, supercharged by an El Niño cycle and record-breaking ocean heat, proves that this crisis does not stop at the shoreline.