Small islands states sound alarm at UN over their vulnerability to climate change

UN News Centre: Representatives of small island States took to the podium at the General Assembly today to exhort the world to pay greater attention to their vulnerability to climate change, stressing that sustainable development will not be possible as rising sea levels threaten to swamp them.

From the Caribbean to the Pacific to the Atlantic, the small island countries said the world was not moving quickly enough to either mitigate the effects of climate change or support the poorest countries as they tried to adapt to them.

“The very existence of small islands States like those in the Caribbean and the Pacific could be imperilled if current trends are not reversed or altered,” the Prime Minister of Barbados, Freundel Stuart, told the Assembly’s annual general debate in New York.

“We must be cautious, therefore, about how we use fossil fuels, about carbon emission levels and about the unregulated treatment of waste. The planet has begun to protest through dramatic changes in climate change and the prospect of sea level rise,” said Mr. Stuart.

Grenada’s Prime Minister Tillman Thomas called for agreement at ongoing United Nations-led climate change negotiations on measures aimed at reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and for the quick disbursement of funding to help small island States adapt....

Fakaofo Atoll in the Tokelau Group, photographed from 30,000+ feet on October 19, 2005. Shot by Marshman (I think), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license