By CIVICUS
Dec 19 2025 –  
CIVICUS discusses climate displacement and Tuvalu’s future with Kiali Molu, a former civil servant at Tuvalu’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and currently a PhD candidate at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji and the University of Bergen in Norway. His research focuses on state sovereignty and climate change in the Pacific.

Kiali Molu

In Tuvalu, one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, rising seas and intensifying storms have made life increasingly precarious. Over 80 per cent of people have applied for Australia’s new climate visa under a treaty signed in November 2023. Under the treaty, 280 Tuvaluans can resettle in Australia each year through a ballot system. While recognising Australia’s willingness to host Tuvaluans, civil society continues to pressure major emitters, including Australia, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fund climate adaptation measures in vulnerable countries to prevent further displacement.

Why have so many Tuvaluans applied for Australia’s climate mobility visa?

This visa is part of the Falepili Union Treaty agreed by Australia and Tuvalu. The treaty combines a special mobility pathway, guarantees around Tuvalu’s statehood and sovereignty and a broader security arrangement. Under the mobility component, Tuvaluans can apply for residency in Australia through a ballot system, without being forced to permanently relocate.

Many applications are driven by practical reasons, such as employment opportunities to be able to support families back home. Others value the ability to travel more freely, particularly given Australia’s historically long and uncertain visa processes. Access to education opportunities and social protections also matter. What’s important is that selection under this pathway does not require people to leave Tuvalu. It creates choice and security in a context where the future feels increasingly uncertain.

How is climate change reshaping daily life in Tuvalu?

Rising sea levels and frequent king tides regularly flood homes, public buildings and roads, interrupting community gatherings, education and work. Coastal erosion continues to reduce habitable land, while saltwater intrusion contaminates groundwater and destroys pulaka pits that are central to food security, as they’re used to grow staple root crops.

These impacts extend beyond infrastructure: higher reliance on imported food means families face rising costs, and stagnant water means a rise in waterborne diseases. Constant flooding is increasing anxiety about displacement and cultural continuity, and farming and fishing livelihoods are becoming harder to sustain. Climate change affects our food, health, housing and identity every single day.

What does potential resettlement mean for Tuvaluan culture and identity?

Our identity is inseparable from our community, our land and the ocean surrounding it. Tuvaluan culture is rooted in fenua – shared practices around agriculture and fishing, church life and the falekaupule, a community meeting house. Large-scale resettlement risks disrupting these foundations. The transmission of everyday cultural practices, language and oral history may weaken if younger Tuvaluans grow up away from the islands.

However, mobility doesn’t automatically mean cultural loss. Tuvaluan communities abroad are finding ways to preserve collective life, language and traditions through associations, churches and digital platforms. Initiatives such as the Tuvalu Digital Nation aim to safeguard cultural heritage virtually. Still, there is no substitute for ancestral land, and this raises profound questions about what it means to be Tuvaluan if our homeland becomes uninhabitable.

What climate adaptation measures does Tuvalu urgently need?

Adaptation for Tuvalu is not only about renewable energy and seawalls. While these remain essential, there’s also a critical legal and political dimension. The international system still defines statehood on the basis of physical territory, offering little protection to nations facing permanent land loss due to climate change.

We believe Tuvalu should push for a new global legal framework that rethinks sovereignty in the context of climate displacement. This would protect Tuvalu’s international legal personality, maritime boundaries and political rights even if parts of its territory become uninhabitable. This diplomatic strategy is needed as much as physical adaptation measures because it addresses national survival, not just infrastructure resilience.

What responsibilities do major polluters have towards climate-vulnerable states?

Major polluters have legal and moral obligations towards climate-vulnerable countries. International law increasingly recognises duties to reduce emissions, prevent environmental harm and cooperate in protecting those most at risk. Recent legal developments, including advisory opinions from international courts, reinforce that these responsibilities are enforceable, not optional.

These obligations go beyond emissions cuts. They include providing climate finance through mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund and the Loss and Damage Fund, supporting adaptation efforts and sharing technology. For countries like Tuvalu, this support is fundamental to preserving lives, culture and sovereignty. Continued inaction by major emitters should not be seen solely as political failure, but also as a breach of international law.

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Farmers can now know and benefit from their contribution to climate change thanks to a formula that can be used to calculate the amount of carbon stored in fruit trees. In a project dubbed Fruit Trees for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in East Africa, the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), in […]

By Gilles-Éric Séralini, Jérôme Douzelet and Gérald Jungers
PARIS, Dec 19 2025 – Today, society is rightly concerned about the rising prevalence of autism among children worldwide; affecting up to 1% of children, it has a profound impact on families. Neuroinflammation and environmental origins are increasingly implicated. But what causes them?

Let us take a broader view. Depression among adolescents is widespread, without it being possible to clearly separate social from neurological causes. Even in China, scientists have demonstrated a link between pollution, asthma, and depression among young people.

Genetic factors, while not excluded, cannot explain everything, as they do not change rapidly enough to account for such a swift increase across the population. Likewise, when we include neurodegenerative diseases among older people, and even among younger adults, the number of people affected becomes staggering. Finally, environmentally linked cancers affect at least one in three people worldwide.

All these diseases and conditions are chronic and slow developing. Medicine primarily alleviates their symptoms, while their causes lead to extremely serious consequences for society. If we then look at the biosphere as a whole, species extinction and abnormalities, alongside climate disruption, we gain certainty about the role of anthropogenic effects in these problems. This is neither the result of individual ill will nor bad luck, but rather the rotten fruit of a system.

An increasing number of specialists believe that a paradigm shift is necessary to break free from this situation. Recently, forty-three of us from five continents co-signed an article in Environmental Sciences Europe, a high-impact scientific journal, detailing the malpractice surrounding the authorization of toxic substances, particularly pesticides and plasticizers.

The historical archives of Monsanto-Bayer have shown how doubt has been deliberately maintained through dishonest practices in order to keep society in ignorance, falsely believing that authorized products are properly assessed. These revelations, made possible through the U.S. justice system, led to convictions for fraud benefiting more than 100,000 cancer patients.

The issue is closely related when it comes to disabilities, yet these remain neglected. According to a recent French parliamentary report, 50,000 pupils are currently without appropriate support solutions, compared with 36,000 in 2024. Among them are many autistic children suffering from gastrointestinal microbiota disorders, one of the leading reasons for medical consultations. This highlights the devastation caused by ultra-processed food, which has harmful effects on food intolerances. We now understand how the nervous system surrounding the intestine, the “second brain,” connected to the primary one, malfunctions.

Let us already do, humbly, what we can where we are, much like Pierre Rabhi’s hummingbird parable, which seeks to extinguish a forest fire with the water carried in its beak: “At least I will have tried.” This is what the association LEX Les Enfants Extraordinaires does in Barjac, in the Gard region, France. It welcomes young people with disabilities who have no support solutions, offering them a social life alongside the village’s older residents. Organic gardening and cooking workshops are welcoming spaces, at least without adding pesticides and pollutants; work is done through short supply chains. Equine-assisted activities, animal-assisted therapy, and wheelchair repairs also allow participants to once again become givers of joy and creators of smiles.

Taken individually, these diseases are sometimes attributed to bad luck or to various social causes. But one inevitably thinks of epigenetic or transgenerational, therefore environmental, inheritance. We shudder at the effects of persistent, fossil-based pollutants, starting from the fetus and pregnancy, since we have shown that they cross the placenta, as do some of the world’s most widely used pesticides, such as Roundup, implicated in Monsanto-Bayer’s frauds. These substances accumulate in our environment, limited by the atmosphere; all forms of life are sensitive to and subjected to them.

We detect how pollutants embed themselves in all living tissues and are deliberately disseminated. They are laden with heavy metals, derived from carcinogenic and neurotoxic petroleum residues used in their manufacture. We have demonstrated that all endocrine disruptors are also neurotoxic through other cellular mechanisms, like sand gradually clogging and disrupting the brain and nervous system.

Solutions do exist. We can feed the world through agroecological agriculture, as specifically demonstrated by international reports from Olivier De Schutter. This requires raising fewer pigs, chickens, and cattle in intensive systems, as these practices saturate the ultra-processed food of wealthy countries with pollutants. Such intensive systems are unnecessary. Today, we maintain more suffering livestock than children worldwide.

Agroecological agriculture will regenerate ecosystems, fortunately highly resilient, through credible alternatives already implemented across the planet. Sadly, these are currently stifled by legislative gridlock generated by lobbying efforts designed to preserve the outdated, intensive post-war model. Outdated, because “growth” is a flawed concept, built on neglect and the deliberate omission of externalities. But we will get there.

Gilles-Éric Séralini was Professor of Toxicology and Molecular Biology at the University of Caen Normandy. Along with Gérald Jungers, an associate researcher, he is a member of the “Risks, Quality and Sustainable Environment” cluster of the MRSH.

Jérôme Douzelet is the founder and coordinator of the association LEX, Les Enfants Extraordinaires, in Barjac, of which G.E.S. is President

IPS UN Bureau

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 19 2025 – A long-standing proposal going back to 1996—to establish a single non-renewable seven-year term for the Secretary-General of the United Nations—has been resurrected by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The original proposal was part of a study sponsored by the Dag Hammarskjold and Ford Foundations. According to the proposal, the seven-year term “ would give the SG the opportunity to undertake far-reaching plans free from undesirable pressures.”

Ban has said a single, nonrenewable seven-year term will strengthen the independence of the office. The current practice of two five-year terms, he said, leaves Secretaries-General “overly dependent on this Council’s Permanent Members for an extension.”

A former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt was deprived of a second five-year term when the US was the only permanent member state to veto his second term despite the fact that he received 14 of the 15 votes in the Security Council.

“As the highest policy-making organ of the United Nations, and as the ultimate appointing body, the General Assembly should adopt a comprehensive resolution establishing a single seven-year term and all key features of an improved process of appointing the Secretary-General,” the study said.

The same seven-year term, according to the 1996 study authored by Sir Brian Urquhart and Erskine Childers, should also apply to heads of UN agencies and UN programmes.

The study was titled “A World in Need of Leadership: Tomorrow’s United Nations. A Fresh Appraisal.” Sir Brian was a former UN Under-Secretary-General (USG) for Special Political Affairs and Childers was a former Senior Advisor to the UN Director-General for Development and International Economic Affairs.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN, told IPS that, in keeping with the best interest of the operational credibility of the world’s most universal multilateral body with a global mandate, and as a conscientious UN insider, “I believe very strongly and quite comfortably that there is substantive merit in the long-standing, but surprisingly undervalued, proposal to establish a single non-renewable seven-year term of office for the Secretary-General of the United Nations.”

In an op-ed published on 20 June 2011 in IPS on Ban’s second term, and commenting in general on the re-election process, he wrote, “This unclear, closed-door, behind-the-scenes and exclusionary process results in the recommendation of a person who is dreaming of re-election for a second term from the very first day in office.”

Ambassador Chowdhury went on to underscore that “This very human temptation for a second term is so overwhelming, so intoxicating that the incoming secretary-general’s main effort in office is wholly conditioned by this desire.” Keeping fully in perspective the “veto element,” the wishes and inclinations of the P5 get the priority attention of the “Chief Administrative Officer” of the UN.

“I fully agree,” he said, “with the conventional understanding in the corridors of the UN that the debt that an SG accrues from the P5 during his first term for his re-election gets paid off during the second term. This arrangement serves both the secretary-general and the P5 well.”

More so, he noted, because they know full well that the broader membership of the UN is never able to agree to long overdue reforms of the unacceptable electoral process for the head of the secretariat. This encourages the possibility of a lacklustre leader to emerge, particularly if a P5 representative engages in the selection process at the instructions from the capital which is not supportive of the centrality of the UN’s global role.

Asked if the current Secretary-General António Guterres agrees with the proposal, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters last week:

“Well, the current Secretary-General respects his role as Secretary-General to stay outside of the process of the Member States’ discussions. Obviously, any change in the terms of a Secretary-General would need to be agreed to by the Member States, and he trusts that they will work this out amongst themselves and find a solution.”

Haq said Guterres thinks that there are a number of reform steps that can be taken. Obviously, since he is the sitting Secretary-General, he’s not going to voice his views on this right now, while the Member States are considering it. And of course, you’ve seen his own support for the idea to have the first female Secretary-General. “But again, these are decisions that are not in our hands,” said Haq.

Dr. Palitha Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, told IPS some see merit in extending the term of office of the SG to seven years. But would such an extension add value? An effective SG could always seek re-election under the current set up and the GA has given a second term to most SGs.

The Member States could also refrain from re-electing an ineffective SG. If an ineffective SG were to be given a seven year term, the most important international organization in the world will have to suffer the burden of such an individual for an unfairly long and painful period, he pointed out.

An effective SG, subject to the political and financial constraints that he/she operates under, could achieve much in five years. What is required is the ability to operate in an volatile global environment, superior management skills and the knack for picking excellent staff, especially as USGs and ASGs. The current tendency to accept whomever big powers foist on the SG and to appoint lacklusture performers tends to reflect poorly on the leader of this august body and the Member States pay a heavy price, said Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN.

“What is really needed is the institutionalisation of a system that enables the UN to pick potentially efficient performers without the need to depend on whimsies of the P5. Major corporations operate in this manner. Successful performers will be retained for five or ten years. Those who fail will be dropped. The member states will be the best judges, he declared.

Sanam B. Anderlini, Founder and CEO, International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), told IPS: “I think a 7 year term is an excellent idea – it would enable the SG to be courageous and imaginative in vision and practice. They would not be encumbered with the tasks of currying favour with member states or campaigning for votes for a second term.”

Additionally, with a seven-year horizon, they’d be compelled and motivated to ensure change and impact, because everyone ultimately wishes to have a good legacy, she pointed out.

But the key is ensuring that the selected leaders have the necessary courage, vision and values, she said

The 7-year terms should be staggered so we don’t lose the entire UN systems leadership team in one go. The idea of extending the United Nations Secretary-General’s term in office is a proposal that has been discussed as a reform idea, but the current, standard term remains five years, renewable once, declared Anderlini.

Recounting his IPS op-ed, Ambassador Chowdhury said he had underscored that “Another important idea to ensure independence of the Secretary-General would be to make the office restricted to one term for each incumbent.”

The seven-year term is adequate for any leader worth the name to deliver positive results and show what can be achieved for any global institution. Any change in the tenure of office and in the re-election process will require the amendment of the UN Charter and therefore the concurrence of the P5, said Ambassador Chowdhury, initiator of the UNSCR 1325 as President of the UN Security Council in March 2000, Chairman of the UN General Assembly’s Main Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Matters and Founder of the Global Movement for The Cultural of Peace (GMCoP).

On 30 October 2023, in another op-ed in IPS, Ambassador Chowdhury recommended that “… in the future the Secretary-General would have only one term of seven years, as opposed to the current practice of automatically renewing the Secretary-General’s tenure for a second five-year term, without even evaluating his performance.”

The seven-year term is adequate for any leader worth the name to deliver positive results and show what can be achieved for any global institution. In any case, we need to remember that any change in the tenure of office and in the re-election process will require the amendment of the UN Charter and therefore the concurrence of the P5.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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