Micronesia at Bali climate change talks

Micronesia, from the Greek mikros (μικρός) (meaning small) and nesos (νῆσος) (meaning island), is a subregion of Oceania, comprising hundreds of small islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Philippines lie to the northwest, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Melanesia to the west and southwest, and Polynesia to the east.

Islands raise their voices at Bali climate change talks

NUSA (Pacnews) – “SIDS” and “AOSIS,” the two agitating words heard repeatedly 10 years ago in one of Japan’s large cities Kyoto, appear to have evaporated in the tropical heat of the Indonesian island Bali.

SIDS stands for Small Island Developing States, numbering 38, and AOSIS for the Alliance of Small Independent States with a membership of 43 states and observers. The members are drawn from all oceans and regions of the world — Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, and the South China Sea.

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is generally seen as an important first step toward a global emission reductions regime that will stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level which will limit dangerous climate change.

The Kyoto protocol expires in 2012. The UN climate change conference in Bali that was scheduled to conclude on Friday was tasked with launching negotiations on a new global deal on climate change by 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“Negotiate post-Kyoto but do not forget our particular concerns,” was the message representatives of Small Island and Developing states and those of AOSIS countries had been pressing in official discussions last week at the international climate negotiations.

Tuvalu’s deputy environment minister Tavau Tell argued that his country and other SIDS had contributed nothing to climate change and yet if its effects turn out to be catastrophic and unabated, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted, it would mean temperature increases by the end of the century of up to 4 degrees centigrade and sea levels rising by up to 60 centimeters.

“The consequences for a low-lying atoll nation like Tuvalu would be ecologically, economically and culturally disastrous. It would mean Tuvalu’s total demise into the ocean along with our culture, livelihood and fundamental sovereignty and human rights,” he told delegates this week. Tuvalu is a Pacific island with a population of 12,000.

Taking up cudgels on behalf of the Pacific Small Island Developing States, Palau’s President Tommy E. Remengesau pleaded with the international community to recognize its “moral obligation to commit an appropriate level of funding to vulnerable and small developing states.” Palau is a Pacific island state with a population of 21,000.

Across Micronesia, a group of Pacific islands, people are doing all they can to adapt. The commitment of countries in the north Pacific to the Micronesia Challenge — a pledge to protect 30 percent of near shore marine and 20 percent of terrestrial resources by 2020 — is an important investment in nature, to build resilience and to give them the greatest range of adaptation options relating to food security and coastal protection in their natural systems.

Their goal is to take this one step further — by mainstreaming the Micronesia Challenge across borders, and across all sectors within Challenge countries: Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and Marshall Islands, and the U.S. territories of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands.

Islands and their surrounding waters cover one-sixth of the world’s surface, and provide habitat for more than half of the Earth’s diversity of marine plants and animals. They are home to an astonishingly high ratio of endemic species — plants and animals found nowhere else in the world — and contain more endangered, rare and threatened species than anywhere else.

Islands and their coastal areas are also a critical source of food, jobs and income for millions of people — more than 600 million people live on more than 100,000 islands around the globe.

With this in view, the Palau president who initiated the Micronesia Challenge also urged the need for recognizing the human rights implications of climate change.

Hon. Tuita, environment minister of Tonga, a Pacific island state with a population of 117,000 said: “The ability to adapt to climate change is now an absolute requirement that will require further commitments of financial and technical expertise.”

Though wealthy and highly industrialized countries are mainly responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions causing current climate change, Pacific islands are not sitting back. Estimates are that by 2015 they will have reduced their GHG emissions from energy sources by two million tons. Although this is not a lot by global standards, it is an about 33 percent reduction in the “business as usual” scenario.

Credits:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronesia

http://www.mvariety.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=4062&format=html