UN climate chief: Time running out
The UN's top official on climate change, Christiana Figueres, warned on Tuesday that time is running out for meaningful action on global warming, citing the plight of low-lying Pacific nations that face ever-rising seas.
Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, who is in Samoa for a UN conference on small island states, said the impact of climate change is greatest on the small Pacific nations, even though they have contributed little to the problem.
"Climate change is the greatest threat these islands face and they are recognized as the bellwether of global efforts to address this issue," she said. "Unless the world acts on climate change in a timely way, they are going to be the hardest hit."
Island leaders have become increasingly vocal on the issue in the face of global inaction, with Seychelles President James Michel telling the Samoa conference that the interests of big business have dominated the debate for too long.
"It is time that we recognized climate change for what it is - a collective crime against humanity," he said. "Climate change ... is robbing island nations of their right to exist. We must save our future together."
Figueres said rising seas have not only eroded the coastlines of island states but have spoiled water supplies after entering the water table and swamping agricultural land, rendering it barren.
Another result of warming, scientists say, is that more cyclones and storms will batter the islands. That understanding has sparked planning for a worst-case scenario in which refugees would have to be relocated from their homelands.
Kiribati, the island archipelago that has bought land in neighboring Fiji, is probably the best known example of such planning, Figueres said, "but countries as large as Papua New Guinea are already starting to identify their most threatened populations".
"These are extreme measures that these islands are having to look at. Of course they, and the rest of the world, want migration of populations out of the islands to be kept at a minimum."
Figueres said the situation facing island nations underlines the need for progress in the quest to seal a global pact on greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2015.
The UN wants to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius over pre-Industrial Revolution levels, which scientists say is the minimum needed to stabilize the climate.
"Science tells us that we have to stay under 2 degrees temperature-wise and that the door is closing quickly," she said. "It's still possible for us to stay under 2 degrees and we have to do it."
Marshall Islands President Christopher Loeak said island nations have to get across a positive message about what needs to be done at a UN summit in New York this month, which will be followed by an attempt in Paris next year to forge a new climate deal.
"The time for finger-pointing is long past, ... instead, we must recognize that there is no more powerful form of leadership than leadership by example," he said.
(China Daily 09/03/2014 page10)
