Island Nations Plead for Their Lives as World Dawdles at Climate Talks
Leaders of the world's tiny island states swamped already by rising seas from global warming have come to the Cancun climate talks to plead for their lives, they said on Wednesday night. "We're talking about survival," said Marcus Stephen, president of Nauru and head of the group of 14 Pacific Small Island Developing States at the UN negotiations.
The scattered low-lying Pacific islands are most at risk of being wiped off the map from runaway climate change. Their heads of state have led the charge to give voice to island nations in the UN talks. Nearly 200 countries are meeting in the Mexican resort to flesh out the building blocks of an international pact against global warming. In Cancun last night, leaders of Nauru, Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati and Tuvalu said that seawater inundation, catastrophic typhoons and other extreme weather events are eroding their coastlines, sweeping their homes away and harming agriculture.
"Climate change for Samoa is not something that will happen in the future. We have already experienced destruction," said Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi of Samoa. "We need to move quickly, rather than spend too much time talking."
All five leaders blasted last year's controversial summit in Denmark that ended in the non-binding Copenhagen Accord that was cobbled together in the final hours.
"It fell well way short of [what is needed] to ensure the future survival of our countries," said Anote Tong, president of Kiribati.
Still, the island states are part of the 114 parties of the 193-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that have formally associated with the accord.
Where's the Money?
Tong said they signed on only to get the $30 billion of "fast-start" finance that was agreed in the document.
The island states believed association by enough parties "would trigger the flow" of "the very generous funds made in Copenhagen," Tong said. "That has not happened."
So far, around $28 billion has been pledged publicly, though advocates claim much of the money is recycled aid, in violation of the accord. None of it has been dispensed. Negotiators are in a logjam of indecision over a "green fund" that would funnel cash to countries to mitigate their emissions with clean energy technologies and to adapt to climate impacts.
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