Climate appeal by Pacific islands

May 21st, 2010

Pacific island nations have compared global warming to an invading army in a plea for the UN Security Council to break the stalemate in negotiations over a legally binding global climate treaty.

The 11 nations that make up the Pacific Small Island Developing States wrote to members of the UN’s most powerful body to argue that the threat they face from a warmer world and rising sea levels is comparable to armed conflict.

The 15-nation Security Council oversees threats to international peace and security.

“Climate change can devastate a country just as thoroughly as an invading army,” Nauru’s UN Ambassador Marlene Moses said as chair of the island nations’ group.

Ms Moses said the Security Council must step in because the UN-led negotiations for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases and assistance for the most vulnerable nations is stalled.

“If (the) international community fails to take immediate action, then it will be complicit in the extinction of entire nations,” she said.

The group said climate change is contributing to severe food and water shortages in the Pacific and already making refugees of people in Vanuatu, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.

The group’s letter, sent by UN ambassadors from the 11 Pacific island nations, was pointedly critical of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that sponsored the last major climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark last December.

A last-minute political agreement fell short on specific steps to cool the planet, but urged deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the globe. It also set up the first significant programme of climate aid to poorer nations and adopted a goal of holding the rise in global temperatures below two degrees Celsius.

A promised 30 billion US dollar (£21bn) fund over the next three years, scaling up to 100 billion US dollars (£69bn) a year by 2020, was a key element.

Source: Climate appeal by Pacific islands – Belfast Telegraph

Date: 21 May 2010

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Categories:

Climate ChangeClimate Change

Environmental RefugeesEnvironmental Refugees

Food SecurityFood Security

NewsNews

NO2, Black Carbon & other GHGsNO2, Black Carbon & other GHGs

Rising Sea Levels & ErosionRising Sea Levels & Erosion

Water ShortageWater Shortage

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  • C Robson

    While the Earth has always endured natural climate change variability, we are now facing the possibility of irreversible climate change in the near future. The increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth?s atmosphere from industrial processes has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect. This in turn has accentuated the greenhouse ?trap? effect, causing greenhouse gases to form a blanket around the Earth, inhibiting the sun?s heat from leaving the outer atmosphere. This increase of greenhouse gases is causing an additional warming of the Earth?s surface and atmosphere. A direct consequence of this is sea-level rise expansion, which is primarily due to the thermal expansion of oceans (water expands when heated), inducing the melting of ice sheets as global surface temperature increases.
    Forecasts for climate change by the 2,000 scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project a rise in the global average surface temperature by 1.4 to 5.8°C from 1990 to 2100. This will result in a global mean sea level rise by an average of 5 mm per year over the next 100 years. Consequently, human-induced climate change will have ?deleterious effects? on ecosystems, socio-economic systems and human welfare.
    At the moment, especially high risks associated with the rise of the oceans are having a particular impact on the two archipelagic states of Western Polynesia: Tuvalu and Kiribati. According to UN forecasts, they may be completely inundated by the rising waters of the Pacific by 2050.According to the vast majority of scientific investigations, warming waters and the melting of polar and high-elevation ice worldwide will steadily raise sea levels. This will likely drive people off islands first by spoiling the fresh groundwater, which will kill most land plants and leave no potable water for humans and their livestock. Low-lying island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives are the most prominent nations threatened in this way.
    “The biggest challenge is to preserve their nationality without a territory,” said Bogumil Terminski from HEI. Rosemary Rayfuse from the University of New South Wales argued that “a solution to the ‘disappearing state’ dilemma is suggested through adoption of a positive rule freezing baselines and through recognition of the category of ‘deterritorialised state’. It is concluded that the articulation of new rules of international law may be needed to provide stability, certainty and a future to disappearing states”.