Islands in the storm

Abstract

People like living near the sea. From early human settlements to many of today's great cities, proximity to the oceans and estuaries of the world has brought advantages such as trade, transport, and easy access to marine resources. Coastal areas have also long been favorite holiday destinations, with resorts and homes with sea views lining beaches and cliffs everywhere. However, people living along coasts will be among the first to be affected by the rising sea levels and increasingly frequent severe storms that are predicted consequences of global climate change. Although no definite link exists between global warming and the trio of hurricanes that caused so much destruction and loss of life in the Caribbean and southern US this year, they are a portent of things to come. Even the most skeptical governments now recognize, albeit reluctantly, that global climate change is real, and that it is no longer a question of if, but of when, and how much. Large, wealthy countries have already begun to plan for these contingencies. They have the luxury of being able to build at higher elevations, of moving populations away from high-risk areas, and of diverting huge sums of money and manpower to disaster relief and the rebuilding of ravaged areas. Small island nations are generally not so fortunate. Many are low-lying or have uninhabitable interiors, so that the people, infrastructure, and agriculture are concentrated in coastal zones. This, combined with the tendency of small islands to be economically and ecologically fragile, makes them particularly vulnerable to the effects of global climate change. In January 2005, small island nations will join with donor and other countries at a meeting in Mauritius, to discuss the many challenges they face. A key item on the agenda will be climate change. An alliance of 43 small island developing States (SIDS), created prior to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, persuaded the United Nations to call a Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, in Barbados in 1994. Now, 10 years later, an international meeting will review the implementation of the Barbados Program of action. There will undoubtedly be calls for developed nations to renew their pledges of financial assistance since, according to a recent report by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, foreign aid represented only 1% of small islands' gross national income in 2002, compared to 2.6% in 1990. But help is also needed in advance planning and coastal management, as well as advice on the cheapest, most effective methods for preventing coastal erosion – not the large-scale, large-investment infrastructure projects that a developed country would use, but simple, affordable measures such as maintaining sufficient space between houses and the shoreline, and preserving wetlands, mangroves, and other natural buffers against storms. The international community should provide the financial and technical resources to help these at-risk nations develop and implement the response strategies they will need to protect themselves as much as possible from the impacts of climate change. At the opening General Assembly, held in New York in September, the representatives of the small island nations called on the developed world to go a big step further – to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, that are the root cause of global warming. By the time the world's biggest polluting nations have finished arguing about carbon credits, deadlines, and percentage reduction levels, the small island nations fear it will be too late. Russia's ratification of the Kyoto Treaty, announced this September, is predicted to re-energize international climate negotiations. Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, called on “other nations, some of whom, like Russia, may have been…reluctant to ratify [the Treaty], to now join us in this truly global endeavor”. At the time of writing, the US has not yet gone to the polls for the 2004 Presidential elections. Yet, whatever the outcome, as Rep. Tom Udall pointed out in this column last month, environmental issues should be tackled in a bipartisan spirit. Although some cities and states across the country are introducing measures to reduce CO2 emissions, the US is still one of the world's top CO2-producing countries. It is therefore at the Federal level that action is required, with the US returning to the negotiating table, for the sake of its own citizens as well as those of other nations. As Mr Fradique Bandeira De Melo De Menezes, President of Sao Tome and Principe, so eloquently told the UN General Assembly, “Is my small country to end up nothing but a tiny volcanic peak sticking up above the waves, with the last of our people clinging to the land left unclaimed by the rising sea? The Kyoto Protocol must be implemented by all, for the benefit of all.” Dr Sue Silver, Editor-in-Chief