Britain’s King Charles to be offered high chief title in Samoa

King Charles and Queen Camilla prepare to depart from Australia at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport on October 23 2024.
King Charles and Queen Camilla prepare to depart from Australia at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport on October 23 2024.
Image: Bianca De Marchi-Pool/Getty Images

Britain's King Charles will be offered the title of high chief in Samoa during a three-day visit starting on Wednesday, and will be shown the impact of rising sea levels due to climate change in the Pacific island nation.

Lenatai Victor Tamapua, a Samoan chief and MP, said he planned to offer the title of "Tui Taumeasina" to the monarch during a traditional ceremonial welcome for Charles and Queen Camilla on Thursday.

He will later lead Charles through a walkway on a mangrove reserve highlighting the impact of climate change on the Pacific nations and its communities.

“The king tide today is about twice what it was 20 to 30 years ago, and that is affecting our land. It's eating away at some of the areas that are so hard for us to control, and people (have to) move inward and inland,” Tamapua said.

Charles has spent a lifetime campaigning on environmental issues and in 2020 described global warming and climate change as the greatest threat humanity has faced.

The offer of a high chief title for Charles comes after he was accused of “genocide” by an Australian indigenous senator at Parliament House in Canberra during the monarch's six-day visit to Australia which concluded on Wednesday.

The Australian royal tour was Charles' inaugural visit to an overseas realm as sovereign, his first major foreign trip since being diagnosed with cancer, and his first visit by a British monarch to Australia in 13 years.

Charles is head of state in Australia, New Zealand and 12 other Commonwealth realms outside the UK, though the role is largely ceremonial.

He is also the symbolic head of the Commonwealth and is travelling to Samoa, his first to the island of around 200,000 people, for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting. He is expected to leave Samoa on Saturday morning.

More than half of the Commonwealth's members are small states and many of them Pacific island nations facing the threat of rising sea levels caused by climate change. The leaders are expected to make a declaration on protecting the ocean, with climate change a key topic for discussion.

Britain has said it will not bring the issue of reparations for historical transatlantic slavery, demanded by Caribbean countries, to the table at the heads of government meeting, but is open to engage with leaders who want to discuss it.

Reuters


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