My country needs a precious gift from the world’s people – the vision to take bold, urgent action on climate change, and the will to follow it through. Only concerted action can protect us from the rising seas and lack of fresh water that now threaten my nation’s very existence.
I am from the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a string of 34 low-lying coral atolls, comprising over 1,000 islands and islets scattered over one million square miles of the Pacific Ocean.
Climate change is not a distant prospect, but a reality for us now. People are starting to ask: What is happening to our country? What will my children do? Not our grandchildren or great-grandchildren, but our children, who are already on the frontline.
In other countries, you can talk about climate change as something intangible whose impacts will arrive in 50 years. But if the world does not tackle climate change now, then my people will be displaced. We will become strangers in a foreign land, having lost our national identity, our traditions and our very collective being.
This is today’s reality in the Marshall Islands: we lie an average of only 2 metres above a sea level that is rising much more quickly than previously thought. The most recent US National Climate Assessment says that sea levels in our immediate neighbourhood will rise by 2 metres before 2100.
Today, climate change has left our capital Majuro with only two hours’ worth of fresh water every second day, and many of our outer islands with none at all.
We recently declared a State of Emergency to protect lives and communities against this imminent danger. As I write, ships are traveling to these far-flung communities to deliver fresh water and desalination machines. Of all the ironies, these water-makers are powered by climate-warming diesel.
For the complete article, please see Climate & Development Knowledge Network.
In this interview, EcoPeace Directors Nada Majdalani (Palestine), Yana Abu-Taleb (Jordan) and Gidon Bromberg (Israel) explain why disengaging from a shared environment can aggravate the region’s security challenges.
At the conclusion of the 50th Pacific Islands Forum, Pacific leaders issued a Forum Communiqué and the ‘Kainaki II Declaration for Urgent Climate Change Action Now’ – the strongest collective statement the Forum has issued on climate change. Pacific leaders highlight the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit, the SAMOA Pathway Review, and 25th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 25) to the UNFCCC as “global turning points to ensure meaningful, measurable and effective climate change action”.
If ratified, the Mercosur-EU trade deal may reinforce the parties’ commitment to climate action. Yet, its potential relevance is weakened by a language that often stops short of concrete commitments, as well as political resistance.
Iraq is on the verge of an environmental breakdown, and climate change is not helping. The country's fragile environment and the increasing scarcity of natural resources — particularly water — are a result of poor environmental management, as well as several political and historical factors. However, as climate change impacts add to the existing pressures, the environmental collapse turns into a security issue.