WHILE the rest of the world continues to debate the implications of climate change, amid stark warnings from scientists of the increase in the earth’s temperature by 1.8°C to 4°C by the end of this century, people living on small Pacific islands live with the risk that their villages could be rendered uninhabitable within a decade due to rising sea levels.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of more than 2,000 top scientists, predicts that sea levels are likely to rise by between 28 and 43 cm. If that happens, it would condemn much of the small Pacific islands to flooding, leaving them homeless.

For the leaders of small island-countries, this is not a new issue.

“Civilization is under serious threat from the continued degradation of the environment and the resulting effects of global warming, climate change and the rising sea levels. The small island-states such as the Maldives and other low-lying regions of the world are in the frontline of danger from the rising seas,” Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said in a recent exclusive interview.

Gayoom said that for the Pacific island-countries, climate change remained an urgent and primary concern as it is already having devastating effects on the communities, threatening the well-being and economic survival of the people.

Feeling threatened by the climate change over which they have little control, the island-countries have organized themselves into an Alliance of Small Island States, a group formed in 1990 specifically to lobby on behalf of these countries vulnerable to climate change.

Of the 45 small island developing states in the world, 17 are located in Asia and the Pacific:  Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Maldives, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Paradise drowning

Faced with such a precarious situation for the Maldives, President Gayoom has been an outspoken advocate of tackling climate change. In his book Paradise Drowning, which was launched in April during the Climate Change for Business Summit 2008 in Singapore, he noted the extreme vulnerability of the Maldives to global warming, and the dangers that they posed to the lives and livelihoods of the people.

“My people are blessed with one of the most beautiful settings that nature has to offer. This paradise, though, is endangered! Time is running out for us,” President Gayoom told journalists, startling not a few people who have associated the Maldives with those glossy tourist brochures that tout the islands as pure paradise worth paying a fortune for. “Each year, the seas that make up 99 percent of the Maldives are rising, and slowly but surely engulfing our 1,192 low-lying islands and posing serious risks to the lives and livelihoods of the people.”

The islands of the Maldives—with more than 311,000 people—rise, on average, only up to 1 meter above the sea and any rise in the water level would submerge much of the country, immersing entire islands.

The Maldives is working to protect infrastructure, raise awareness, improve flood defenses and offer voluntary relocation to those who feel under threat from rising sea levels. Building protective walls on 193 inhabited islands would cost about $6 billion, which the government finds too expensive, he said.

The President hoped that his book, a collection of 23 of his speeches at various gatherings, will awaken world leaders to step up efforts to save his imperiled people.

Economy in peril

Like many small islands in the Asia and Pacific region, tourism is the linchpin of the Maldives’ $700-million economy. But rising sea levels threaten that tourism-dependent economy.

The beautiful sandy white beaches, turquoise lagoons, swaying palm trees, colorful coral gardens and marine fauna, year-round equatorial climate and weather and hospitable people attract 600,000 tourists to the Maldives each year.

Tourism accounts for 28 percent of the country’s GDP and brings in more than 60 percent of foreign exchange.

“Our tourism industry will be affected for certain. Climate change will lead to an increase in stormy weather and coral damage, too. So I urge the world to act fast because Maldives cannot deal with the problem alone,” President Gayoom said.

He points to global warming as the real culprit for rising sea levels, and sees the solution in countries cutting the carbon-dioxide emissions which have been blamed for the phenomenon.

He finds it ironic that although the Maldives accounts for only 0.01 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, the country could be “possibly the biggest victim of global warming.”

No island should be left behind

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep), said the Maldives case mirrors the fate of many other coastal areas worldwide.

“The challenge they are facing is one of continued existence,” Steiner said. “So, urgent action is needed in the area of mitigation [and] adaptation financing so it will be addressed in a timely fashion.”

In December last year, delegates of the UN Bali Climate Change Conference from the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) pleaded for the world to take immediate action on the causes behind climate change, otherwise rising sea levels will wipe their homes off the world map.

“We are already feeling the impact of global warming: beach erosion, coral reef bleaching, high tides, frequent flooding and more intense cyclones and storms,” said Angus Friday, Aosis spokesman and ambassador to the UN for the Caribbean island of Grenada.

Mr. Friday told the BusinessMirror that rich countries should take the responsibility because “we believe that the developed countries benefited from rapid economic and industrial development, which basically created the problem.”

To avoid the impact of climate change, Friday said global emissions must be reduced to a level that maintains temperatures well below the 2°C above the preindustry period.

The current Kyoto Protocol requires developed countries to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 5 percent below their 1990 level. These targets must be met within a five-year time frame between 2008 and 2012.

“No island should be left behind,” Friday stressed. “We are on the edge of a tipping point and time has run out. We cannot wait to adapt.”

Like Friday, President Gayoom said the main threats to their island-nation’s survival emanates from beyond their geographical borders. Like them, other small island-nations surely do not wish to become environmental refugees, and they said they will not leave their nation unless they are forced to.

‘Paradise drowning’

WHILE the rest of the world continues to debate the implications of climate change, amid stark warnings from scientists of the increase in the earth’s temperature by 1.8°C to 4°C by the end of this century, people living on small Pacific islands live with the risk that their villages could be rendered uninhabitable within a decade due to rising sea levels.

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