United Nations Radio

Pacific island nations hit hard by climate change

Pacific island nations are likely to be among the hardest hit if a legally binding agreement is not forged at the on-going Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Many Pacific islanders made impassioned pleas at the conference, including Ian Fry, the delegate of Tuvalu:

Fry: We note that President Obama recently went to Norway to pick up a Nobel Prize, rightly or wrongly. But we can suggest that for him to honor this Nobel Prize, he should address the greatest threat to humanity that we have before us, climate change, and the greatest threat to security, climate change. So I make a strong plea that we give proper consideration to a conclusion at this meeting that leads to two legally binding agreements.

Narrator: Speaking earlier at the Conference, Ma'afu Tukui'aulahi, Minister of Environment of Tonga, said the effects of climate change are already being felt in his country:

Tonga: My country is already experiencing an increase in dengue fever, water-borne diseases, increase in cyclones, loss of agriculture land to the sea and approximately about 80 percent of the population of Tonga live in areas very vulneralbe to sea level rise. If we continue to increase at 2 parts per million each year, it will only take about 30 years for our coral reefs to stop growing.

Narrator: Maylin Sese of the Solomons Islands is attending the conference as a member of a group of young people calling themselves Project Survival Pacific:

Sese: I am here to raise my voice on behalf of the youth of the Pacific that climate change is a real issue. Increasing sea level rise, unpredictable weather, increasing temperature, any of which describes climate change. But to me, climate change is loosing my island. Today I witnessed washing away of my shoreline.

Narrator: Maylin says her island is slowly sinking. Her fellow Solomon Islanders have no choice but to leave:

Sese: Sea level rise is forcing my people to migrate. It will affect them because they will have to adapt to a new culture. Increasing temperature affects our food security. As Pacific Islanders, we depend on subsistence farming. We depend much on food from garden. It is a threat to our food security.

Narrator: Ian Fry certainly spoke for all Pacific Islanders when he encouraged decision makers to come up with a proposal that will save their islands:

Fry: I clearly want to have the leaders put before them an option for considering a legally binding treaty to sign on at this meeting. I make this a strong and impassioned plea. We've had our proposal on the table for six months. Six months, it's not the last two days of this meeting. I woke this morning, and I was crying, and that's not easy for a grown man to admit. The fate of my country rests in your hands.

Presenter: Ian Fry, one of many Pacific Islanders who spoke at Climate Change Talks in Copenhagen

Producer: Diane Bailey
Duration: 3'44"