BANGKOK, Oct 5 - Up to half a million people in the Pacific will lose their homes and their countries to rising sea levels because small island nations cannot persuade the rest of the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently, campaigners say.
The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is calling for a significant reduction in global emissions so the world's temperature does not rise more than 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels.
SYDNEY - Pacific Islanders, aiming to secure their very survival, are calling for immediate
commitments from the developed world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by
at least 45 percent by 2020.
"For us, climate change is a reality. We have been experiencing high tidal
waves, which has not been the case earlier," Pelenise Alofa Pilitati,
Chairperson of the Church Education Director's Association in Kiribati, told
IPS. "High tides and sea level rise will submerge our homeland. We don’t want
to become environmental refugees."
A report by the charity said Pacific Islanders were already feeling the effects of global warming, including food and water shortages, rising cases of malaria and more frequent flooding and storms. Some had already been forced from their homes and the number of displaced people was rising, it warned.
BONN, Germany - Tens of millions of people will be displaced by climate change in coming years, posing social, political and security problems of an unprecedented dimension, a new study said on Wednesday.
"Unless aggressive measures are taken to halt global warming, the consequences for human migration and displacement could reach a scope and scale that vastly exceed anything that has occurred before," its authors warned.
"Climate change is already contributing to migration and displacement.
Since
his inauguration in January, President Barack Obama has promised to
take the problem of climate change seriously and step into a leadership
role in the global negotiations. Congressional leadership on climate
has also swelled to deliver domestic climate change legislation. But a
"blind spot" seems to be emerging that may make it more difficult for
the United States to play the leadership role it wishes - and the world
needs it - to play.
Journalists - they're never around when you want one. Two weeks ago
a momentous event occurred: the beginning of the world's first
evacuation of an entire people as a result of manmade global warming.
It has been marked so far by one blog post for the Ecologist and an article in the Solomon Times*. Where is everyone?
The world faces a bleak future over its dwindling water supplies, with pollution, climate change and rapidly growing populations raising the possibility of widespread shortages, a new report compiled by 24 agencies of the United Nations says.
The warning from the UN is based on one of the most comprehensive assessments the global body has undertaken on the state of the world's fresh water and was commissioned for use at a major international water conference being held next week in Istanbul.
CANBERRA - Climate change and rising sea levels pose one of the biggest threats to security in the Pacific and may also spark a global conflict over energy reserves under melting Arctic ice, according to Australia's military.
A confidential security review by Australia's Defense Force, completed in 2007 but obtained in summary by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, said environmental stress had increased the risk of conflicts in the Pacific over resources and food.
Up to 30,000 climate refugees could be created if plans to build a new coal-fired power station go ahead, a report claimed today.
The findings by the World Development Movement were released as environmental activists prepare to stage a 48-hour protest today as part of their ongoing campaign against the new plant at Kingsnorth power station in Kent.
MALE - The Maldives will begin
to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist
revenue into buying a new homeland - as an insurance policy against
climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into
environmental refugees, the country's first democratically elected
president has told the Guardian.
