Tuvalu has issued a stern warning to its Pacific Island neighbours, urging countries not to do deals outside of the like-minded group at major climate talks in Paris.
Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga called for the small island developing states to band together and fight off "serious attempts" to drive a wedge between them.
The call highlights the tensions emerging between even the most tight-knit collections of countries in Paris after days of lengthy and slow negotiations.
"I think now we must remain together and paddle our canoe," Mr Sopoaga said.
The prime minister is upset he wasn't invited to a meeting between some Pacific Island nations, including Kiribati, and United States President Barack Obama earlier this week.
The US offered movement on risk insurance at the meeting as a compromise to finance commitments known as loss and damage.
Mr Sopoaga said he'd heard of deals being made outside the negotiations.
"There are serious efforts to want to drive a wedge to divide us," he told reporters in Paris on Saturday.
"This is dangerous and we must not allow that."
Loss and damage is a major sticking point at the United Nations climate change conference, with vulnerable countries pledging to dig their feet in and demand funding to repair their nations.
Australia is part of a developed nation commitment to raise climate finance to $100 billion each year by 2030 - from private and public sources.
But large developed nations don't want anything in a Paris agreement that would admit liability for compensation due to climate change.
Mr Sopoaga said the meeting with Mr Obama did not represent the views of the small island developing states.
"I'm very disappointed I was not invited, nor did we have an invitation as a collectivity," he said.
"We need to bring things to the table, so that we have collective undertaking".
Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna kept the focus on pressures outside his ally block, reminding other countries climate change was not an academic issue for the Pacific.
"It is no exaggeration to say this is a matter of life or death for us."
Adaptation measures like migration and relocation weren't good enough, he said.
"How do you leave the island or the country of your birth?" he asked.
"It's all you've known."
That feeling is echoed by two Pacific Islander women, who have flown to Paris to fight for their future.
Tinaai Teaua, 23, fears she'll have to leave her home in Kiribati.
"I'm going to have more ahead of me, I want to have children, I want to stay on my own land," she told AAP.
Pulafagu Toafa, from Tuvalu, worries the same will happen to her people and begged leaders in Paris to understand what life is like for islanders in the Pacific.
"We want people to consider that we are also human beings and we need life," Ms Toafa said.
"We are part of the world and we beg these countries to put themselves into our shoes, please."
As the richest country in the region, Australia has faced calls to go in to bat for its Pacific neighbours.
Australian negotiators are understood to be "strongly supporting" a vulnerable nation push to mention a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees in a Paris agreement.
Australia's position is still to work towards a target of two degrees.
Mr Sopoaga said two degrees would be "catastrophic" and would spell the end for his country.
