Charles uttered the words: “May God Bless this ava” before lifting it to his lips. Charles’ wife, Queen Camilla sat beside him, fanning herself to ease the stifling tropical humidity.
The royal couple visited the village of Moata’a where King Charles was made “Tui Taumeasina” or high chief.
”Everyone has taken to our heart and is looking forward to welcoming the king,” chief Lenatai Victor Tamapua told AFP ahead of the visit.
”We feel honoured that he has chosen to be welcomed here in our village. So as a gift, we would like to bestow him a title.”
Tamapua raised the issue of climate change and showed the king and queen around mangroves.
”The high tides is just chewing away on our reef and where the mangroves are,” he told AFP, adding that food sources and communities were being washed away or inundated.
”Our community relies on the mangrove area for mud crab and fishes, but since, the tide has risen over the past 20 years by about two or three metres.”
The king is also in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, and will address a leaders’ banquet on Friday.
The legacy of empire looms large at the meeting. Commonwealth leaders will select a new secretary-general nominated from an African country – in line with regional rotations of the position.
All three likely candidates have called publicly for reparations for slavery and colonialism.
One of the three, Joshua Setipa from Lesotho, told AFP that the resolution could include non-traditional forms of payment such as climate financing.
”We can find a solution that will begin to address some injustices of the past and put them in the context happening around us today,” he said.
Climate change features heavily on the agenda.
Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Fiji have backed calls for a “fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty” – essentially calling for Australia, Britain and Canada to do more to lower emissions.
Pacific leaders argue the trio of “big countries” have historically accounted for over 60% of the 56-nation Commonwealth’s emissions from fossil fuels.
Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change Ralph Regenvanu called on other nations to join the treaty.
”As a Commonwealth family, we look to those that dominate fossil fuel production in the Commonwealth to stop the expansion of fossil fuels in order to protect what we love and hold dear here in the Pacific,” he said.
Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong said her gas and mineral-rich nation was working to be cleaner.
”We know we have a lot of work to do, and I’ve been upfront with every partner in the Pacific,” she said. Pacific island nations – once seen as the embodiment of palm-fringed paradise – are now among the most climate-threatened areas of the planet.
