'We are fighting for survival,' Pacific islands leader warns
Source: The Observer
'We are fighting for survival,' Pacific islands leader warns
John Vidal, environment editor
The Observer, Sunday 1 September 2013
Pacific islanders will challenge world leaders this week to act on climate change, warning that their low-lying atolls are close to becoming uninhabitable because of rising seas and increasingly severe floods, droughts and storm surges.
"The Pacific is fighting for its survival. Climate change has already arrived," said Christopher Loeak, president of the Marshall Islands, which will host the Pacific islands' annual summit, attended by most of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, including the US, China and the EU.
The Marshall Islands, a group of 29 atolls and coral islands standing on average only two metres above sea level, and lying halfway between Australia and Hawaii, is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Earlier this year the president declared a state of emergency following a simultaneous drought and some of the worst floods ever experienced. A freak tide nearly destroyed the capital Majuro, breaching its sea walls and flooding the airport runway. The drought left 6,000 people surviving on less than one litre of water per day
Many other small island Pacific "microstates", including the Solomons, Tuvalu and the Carteret Islands, have all suffered rapid erosion, higher tides, storm surges and inundation of wells with seawater. Earlier this year Kiribati's president, Anote Tong, predicted his country was likely to become uninhabitable between 30 and 60 years from now because of inundation and contamination of its freshwater supplies. Many of its outer islands are being invaded by the sea and people are flocking to the capital, South Tarawa. The state has plans to buy 2,000 hectares of land in Fiji to grow food for itself and possibly to act as a new island home.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/01/pacific-islands-climate-change
= new reply since forum marked as read
