Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says Japan went ahead with the discharging of the Fukushima wastewater before a team of independent scientific experts could complete their investigation.

Rabuka highlighted this while speaking in Vanuatu at the end of the Melanesian Spearhead Group yesterday.

He says the scientific team deployed by the Pacific Islands Forum, are working on the results of the investigation carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Rabuka adds his decision to support Japan caused a stir among his coalition government members.

“And based on that, I also made my statement, which was a unilateral statement I made some weeks ago. It ruffled up a few feathers in my own caucus and my own coalition, which was to be expected because Parliament had passed a motion to ask Japan not to discharge the treated nuclear water into the Pacific.”

Rabuka says during the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Retreat in Denarau, Nadi earlier this year, the regional leaders reiterated their position for Japan not to dump the wastewater as well as continued monitoring of the discharge in the Pacific Ocean.

The Prime Minister adds another concern that leaders raised at the MSG meeting is that the bigger industrialized powers are not serious about the carbon emission targets, in particular, the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Rabuka says perhaps it does not mean much for the developed countries, but the very survival of the Pacific depends on whether we achieve this target.