Small Island Nations "Can Only Do So Much" To Impede Climate Change
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 09.25.07
As the leaders of the attendant developing and small island nations took their turns at the podium on Monday's United Nations high-level event on climate change, their anger—and desperation—was palpable. And it wasn't because they were only given five minutes to make their statements. (Although, like award winners at the Oscars, there were those who skirted the time limit.)
"It is an irony that the least-developed countries and small island states, which are the least responsible for the climate change, are the worst affected," said Sahana Pradhan, Nepal's minister of foreign affairs. "Industrialized nations have a special obligation to mitigation," she added.
Developed countries owe a "moral and environmental debt" that must be "duly paid" to resolve the inequities by climate change's devastating effects, said President Néstor Carlos Kirchner of the Republic of Argentina. "This has for too long been an unkept promise," he said. "So far efforts have been timid and moved toward failure."
Officials spoke of droughts, heat waves, losses in biodiversity, coastal erosion, flooding, and cyclones—events that now recur with "relentless regularity," according to Fakhruddin Ahmed, chief advisor of Bangladesh. He described his country and others as being "on the threshold of a climatic Armageddon," a phrase we're surprised hasn't been picked up on more.
But developing nations, many of them overwhelmingly poor, have little means to deal with global warming, underlining what is proving to be a growing climate divide between the haves and the have-nots. The planet's most vulnerable regions called for a transfer of technology, experience, and resources from richer, developed countries, as well as leadership from the developed world, especially at December's climate talks in Bali, Indonesia (or what we've taken to calling Kyoto 2: Climate Boogaloo).
"The sad reality is that small developing island states can only do so much to improve their resilience against the impacts of climate change," said President Emanual Mori of the Federate States of Micronesia, after detailing a national "climate-proofing" infrastructure development framework that is underway. "For them, any adaptation measures may very well be desperation measures. For an atoll island, just a few meters above sea level and surrounded by the sea, how does one build its resilience against sea-level rise? It would be very costly, and very impractical to build sea walls around every island in Micronesia."
For larger developing nations, it might be a problem.
But all a small island nation has to do, is to promote their island as a eco-friendly getaway.
That will be sure to bring many environmentalists over. That is if the island nation wants to depend on tourism.
Small island nations can build themselves on green tourism. And they'll protect it to be green forever.
Small nations can promote themselves as eco friendly destinations but that won't do much good if the small nation is underwater because of rising sea levels.
Every country needs to take immediate measures now to reduce their carbon footprint and minimize their environmental impact.
Don't forget the carbon expenditure involved in getting to these destinations.
I would not be surprised to see developed nations attempt to apply this carbon expenditure to the destination locations...
It would only be being neighborly for large, industrial countries to mitigate their impacts on other countries in the neighborhood (and we're all "in the neighborhood" now).
For example, if a rich man were to throw a huge party in his mansion, he should not have his guests park on the lawns of his neighbors. Likewise, a good neighbor would not empty his trashcan each week onto the next guy's yard.
The small island nations ironically make the point that no nation is an island-- what we do ripples out across all oceans and all lands.
Small islands, for example those off the coast of Taiwan, are so polluted that you cant go in the water. Calling that an "eco friendly" vacation is far fetched. Even in french polynesia there is nuclear waste from testing over the last half decade. We need to address the problems EXACTLY to come up with solutions based on facts, not hope or hype.
Why don't they just start a class action law suit against the US? Or get us into a war with them, so we have to rebuild them?
hmmmm......does this include the UK?!
i worry that even if a little island does disappear that it wont change anything until it happens to the US
With our current political climate, going "green" refers to making more money, instead of sustainability. I see our stance being to ignore the problem until our continental land mass becomes very noticably smaller, Hawaii mostly (if not totally) gone, and then we blame China for our not taking action. Ours is the Government Of the Oil Corporations, For the Oil Corporations and By the Oil Corporation Shareholders.
Hawaii will never be "gone" even if all fresh water on earth is in the oceans.