SMALL ISLANDS SAY GLOBAL WARMING HURTING THEM NOW
Date: 05-Nov-98
Country: EU
Author: Jason Webb
A delegation from the idyllic but fragile Pacific islands travelled to Buenos Aires to try to convince world leaders at United Nations climate talks to take more action to stop global warming which they fear will cause rising seas to cover their low-lying nations.
Rising sea levels have already endangered sacred sites and drowned some small islands off the tiny nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu, including the islet of Tebua Tarawa, once a landmark for Tuvalu fishermen.
"It's very interesting how they disappear. To watch a small island when it's disappearing and seeing it now is a model of how the whole island is disappearing," Tewareke Borau of Kiribati told a news conference.
Kiribati has already had to move roads inland on its main island as the Pacific Ocean has eaten into the shore.
Delegations from rich countries would feel a greater sense of urgency about stopping global warming if they ran the same risk of being drowned or running out of fresh water next century as do Pacific islanders, the island leaders argued.
They fear for the future of their traditional homes and unique cultures.
"Some of the rich countries don't give a...don't take any notice," said Max Rai from Papua New Guinea, where myriad islets could vanish under the waves if scientists' predictions of higher temperatures expanding ocean waters and melting icecaps are correct.
Rising sea levels have already seeped into some islands' soils, making them too salty to grow vegetables. In Tuvalu, farmers are beginning to grow their taro crops in tin containers filled with compost instead of traditional pits.
Other islanders complained that increasingly violent weather patterns were hitting them hard. Some scientists suspect that severe weather such as drought and hurricanes could be becoming more frequent due to global warming.
"We use the term global warming, but if you are living on Nauru you can actually see and feel the change that has happened," said Ludwig Keke.
"Our underground wells are always empty, our fishponds where we cultivate fish are so dry even the fish are dying, almost cooked in their own wells," he said.
The Buenos Aires summit is meant to find ways to begin implementing the pledge made by richer countries in Kyoto, Japan, last year to cut emissions of greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming by about five percent by 2010.
Scientists say that the reductions the rich industrialised world is proposing are inadequate to prevent global warming. They predict that sea levels could rise by up to three feet (one metre) over the next century.
Much of Tuvalu is only three feet above sea level, and 80 percent of it is less than seven feet (two metres) above the waves.
"For us it's a matter of death and life, whereas in terms of the citizens of the industrialised countries, (global warming) will affect their lifestyles basically, but not to the extent they will be disappearing," said Bikenibeu Paeniu, Tuvalu's prime minister.