A coalition of small island nations behind the case hailed the long-awaited legal opinion issued by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) as a “historic” victory.

The court found that greenhouse gas emissions absorbed by oceans can be considered pollutants and states must do whatever they can to reduce them.

The opinion is not legally binding but supporters of the case hope it can help influence climate negotiations and be used as a precedent in future court cases. 

Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda said the decision “marks a historic milestone in our collective journey towards environmental justice and climate governance”.

“The ITLOS opinion will inform our future legal and diplomatic work in putting an end to the inaction that has brought us to the brink of an irreversible disaster”, he added. 

Landmark case

Antigua and Barbuda is among nine small island states that last year asked Hamburg-based tribunal ITLOS to clarify the state responsibilities on climate change under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The 1982 convention has 164 countries as parties, with the notable exception of the United States.

Africa must reap the benefits of its energy transition minerals

The treaty requires its signatories to prevent, reduce and control marine pollution. But it does not explicitly identify greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants, prompting island nations to seek an opinion on whether that would qualify.

They also asked the tribunal to spell out what the countries should do to cut down emissions given their impact on the oceans. 

In submissions to the proceedings, most countries acknowledged that greenhouse gas emissions pollute the oceans, but they disagreed on what obligations the maritime treaty imposed on their actions related to climate change.

Polluters pushback

China and India challenged the tribunal’s jurisdiction, arguing that issues relating to climate change should be handled within the UN climate change (UNFCCC) regime. 

While accepting the tribunal’s authority to give an opinion on the matter, wealthy nations including the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia said the Paris Agreement lays out the rules and procedures necessary to address climate change and comply with the requirements of UNCLOS. 

The tribunal’s opinion should not be “imposing more stringent obligations than those already agreed” under the Paris Agreement, the EU statement said.

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But the tribunal took a different view. It said “complying with the obligations and commitments under the Paris Agreement” would not be enough to satisfy the country’s duty to protect the oceans.

That is because the Paris Agreement does not require countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “to any specific level according to a mandatory timeline”, but leaves them freedom to set their own climate goals.

The tribunal’s opinion “confirmed that the obligations under the Paris Agreement set a floor, not a ceiling for states to act to prevent greenhouse gas emissions”, said Tiffanie Chan, Policy Officer at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

Existential threat

One of the planet’s greatest carbon sinks, the ocean absorbs about 25% of all carbon dioxide emitted by human activities and has captured 90% of the excess heat generated by those emissions. Global oceans are experiencing unprecedented heat, with surface temperature records broken every day since March 2023.

For small island states, combatting global warming is a matter of survival. The South Pacific nation of Tuvalu could be completely submerged by the end of the century at current rates of emissions and without extensive measures to adjust to climate change.

Payam Akhavan, lead counsel for the nine island nations, poses with other lawyers after The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) gave its advisory opinion. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer

Eselealofa Apinelu, Tuvalu’s Attorney General, said she had travelled for over 24 hours to reach Hamburg but did not want to miss this “historic moment”.

“We have to do everything that we can to make sure that we can find a solution to our challenges”, she said. “This is an important first step in holding the major polluters accountable, for the sake of all humankind”.

Next steps

Climate lawyers and campaigners said the tribunal’s opinion could influence climate negotiations and push the countries most responsible for the climate crisis to raise their ambition to cut emissions when they submit the next round of national climate plans due in early 2025.

Payam Akhavan, the legal counsel for the nine island nations, said the case was borne out of “frustration with the failure of the COP process” to achieve its objectives. “The turn to international law should simply shape future negotiations to ensure that the climate change regime is more robust and that it has more teeth than it presently does”, he added.

Legal experts are also hoping that the decision could form a significant precedent and influence upcoming legal opinions by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights and the International Court of Justice, which are also considering countries’ climate obligations.

The post UN court: Countries must go beyond Paris Agreement to protect oceans appeared first on Climate Home News.

During the opening of a two-week meeting in Hamburg today to clarify state duties to protect the marine environment, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne told the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) that it was time to speak of “legally binding obligations, rather than empty promises that go unfulfilled, abandoning peoples to suffering and destruction”.

Antigua and Barbuda formed an alliance with Tuvalu in 2021 called the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS), which has since been joined by Palau, Niue, Vanuatu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the Bahamas.

They have asked the tribunal for its formal opinion on state responsibilities on climate change under the UN maritime treaty that it is responsible for upholding – the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

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The group of small islands wants the tribunal to clearly set out their legal obligations to protect the marine environment from the impacts of climate change, including ocean warming, acidification and sea level rise.

“Empty promises”

During the first day of oral hearings, Kausea Natano, prime minister of Tuvalu, said vulnerable nations had tried and failed to secure action to cut global greenhouse gas emissions during years of international climate talks.

“We did not see the far-reaching measures that are necessary if we are to avert catastrophe,” said Natano. “This lack of political will endangers all of humankind, and it is unacceptable for small island states like my own, which are already teetering on the brink of extinction.”

Browne told the tribunal it now had the opportunity to issue a “much-needed corrective to a process that has manifestly failed to address climate change. We cannot simply continue with endless negotiations and empty promises.”

Speaking after a summer of record-breaking temperatures on both land and sea, Browne said small island nations had come before the tribunal “in the belief that international law must play a central role in addressing the catastrophe that we witness unfolding before our eyes”.

Influential opinion

COSIS members hope that a strong opinion from the tribunal will prompt governments to take tougher action on climate change. While not legally binding, the opinion could also form the basis of future lawsuits.

The alliance stresses that it is looking to the court to explain existing state obligations, rather than creating new laws.

UN says more needed ‘on all fronts’ to meet climate goals

ITLOS does not have as high a profile as the International Court of Justice, which earlier this year was tasked by the UN to provide an advisory opinion on climate change and human rights. Nor are there as many states under its jurisdiction; the US is notable by its absence.

But the tribunal is expected to come to a conclusion much earlier – potentially within the next year. And experts say its opinion could influence that of other courts including the ICJ as well as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has been asked by Chile and Colombia to provide a similar advisory opinion.

Thirty states that have signed the law of the sea, as well as the EU, submitted written statements to ITLOS before the deadline.

China is one of the few to explicitly challenge the tribunal’s jurisdiction. It does not consider ITLOS to have the power to issue advisory opinions, but only to resolve disputes.

While expressing its “heartfelt compassion for developing countries including small island developing States…. confronting our common climate change challenge” China maintains that the UNFCCC is the only proper channel for addressing it.

The UK does not dispute the tribunal’s jurisdiction, but it does warn ITLOS to have “particularly careful regard to the scope of its judicial function”. The country also raised concerns about the fact that the request for an advisory opinion was raised by only a small number of states.

Limited reach

Written responses show general agreement among states that greenhouse gas emissions are a form of pollution and that they will have a serious impact on the health of the marine environment and its ability to act as a carbon sink.

But they disagree on the extent to which they are required to act on this.

In its statement, COSIS notes that the law of the sea requires states to adopt and implement “all measures that are necessary to prevent, reduce, and control pollution of the marine environment”.

Under the EU’s interpretation, however, this does not totally ban pollution of the marine environment or require states to immediately stop all pollution.

It points to existing international cooperation under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement and says the law of the sea does not require more stringent action.

Nearly all world’s population hit by global heating last quarter – study

COSIS, however, is keen to focus on the science, saying this shows the necessity of keeping global warming to a maximum of 1.5C.

Experts speaking at the tribunal outlined the ways in which climate change was already affecting the world’s oceans and how these are likely to worsen in future.

“Science has long confirmed these realities, and it must inform the content of international obligations,” said Arnold Loughman, attorney general of Vanuatu.

The post Small islands slam ‘endless’ climate talks at landmark maritime court hearing appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Security Council Chamber at the UN headquarters in New York (Pic: UN photos)

By Ed King

Leaders of small island states warned the UN Security Council on Thursday their future is under threat from climate change as rising sea levels eat away at their coastlines.

The prime ministers of Samoa and Jamaica joined UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon at the unusual session, which was also addressed by China, Russia, the UK, France and US.

Ban told envoys he hoped debate at Council level would aid negotiations on a UN-backed greenhouse gas cutting deal, due to be finalised in Paris this December.

Recent storms affecting Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands were forcing small islands to redefine the concept of security suggested Maldives foreign secretary Ali Naseer Mohamed.

“Our small size, geographic isolation, and high exposure to impacts like powerful tropical storms and other extremes make it challenging to prepare for a disaster before it strikes,” he said.

Tuvalu’s envoy to the UN Sunema Pie Simati revealed the tiny country had lost four islands since 2000, two of them after Cyclone Pam this year. The nation of 4 atolls and 5 main islands, has over 120 in total.

“That’s how fast our islands can disappear, in the blink of an eye,” she added.

Maldives minister: Warming above 1.5C will overwhelm islands

The UN rates 52 countries as small island developing states, which are dotted across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans.

Last year the UN’s IPCC climate science panel said sea levels had risen 20cm since 1900. Experts at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that rate is now increasing.

A previous attempt in 2013 to get the Security Council to debate climate change was rejected by China, India and Russia, who said the UN’s climate convention is the proper place for these debates.

But this year’s New Zealand sponsored discussion received wide support, with 75 countries making statements.

UK ambassador Matthew Rycroft warned of mass migration and economic damage if climate change progressed “unchecked”, with Kiribati already buying lands in Fiji as an exit strategy.

“The risk climate change poses goes beyond our shores and those of small islands,” he said.

“Left unaddressed, climate change could constitute one of the gravest threats to international peace and security for generations.”

Speaking to RTCC before he addressed the Council, Maldives minister Mohamed said the debate was “just the beginning” and expressed hopes it would take a more active role in highlighting climate concerns.

“This is unprecedented at the highest level,” he said. “The international will and intention is there, and we believe that’s a good thing, but it is political support that is required.”

The post UN Security Council hears climate fears of small island states appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: Catholic Church England and Wales/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Tonga’s King has taken the environmental challenges facing the small island states in the Pacific to the Vatican.

King Tupou VI, a Methodist, and his wife, Queen Nanasipau’u Tuku’aho, discussed the topic with Pope Francis during a tour of Rome and London.

A statement from the Vatican press office said that the Pope and the King had an “exchange of opinions on the international situation, with particular reference to the insular States of the Pacific and the environmental problems that some of them are compelled to face.”

These small island states are among the most vulnerable nations in the world when it comes to climate change.

As global warming causes sea levels to rise, the low lying nations face coastal erosion and increased flooding.

According to the 2013 World Risk Report, Tonga is the second most vulnerable country to natural disasters in the world after Vanuatu, another small island state.

Green Pope

Pope Francis’ discussion with the King of Tonga is the first time that he has explicitly addressed the climate concerns of the small island states.

Yet the Pontiff has become increasingly vocal on climate change since he was elected as head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics in March 2013.

This has been combined with a concern for the poor and underrepresented.

Ahead of a trip to Tacloban – the area of the Philippines hardest hit by the deadly Typhoon Haiyan – Francis described environmental neglect as a betrayal of the “noble calling” to be stewards of God’s creation.

Francis’ decision to appoint Tongan bishop Soane Patita Paini Mafi as Cardinal has been regarded as an attempt to reach out to the fringes.

Mafi – who was formally elevated to the College of Cardinals at St Peter’s Basilica on Saturday – has previously expressed his concern over the damage that climate change is causing to the Pacific islands.

In an interview with America magazine, he described “our permanent vulnerability to the impact of climate change and global warming, especially to our low lying areas in the Pacific” as one of the most pressing issues facing his community.

The post Tonga’s King talks climate change with Pope Francis appeared first on Climate Home News.

Click here for full page map

By Sophie Yeo

In the Arctic and across small island states, land is disappearing and lives are changing.

Though separated by wide oceans and different cultures, the communities are linked. Climate change is causing ice in the Arctic to melt, which is making sea levels rise. This is putting the existence of low lying islands on the other side of the world in peril.

A project called Many Strong Voices set out to document the changes being wrought upon these vulnerable areas.

Researchers gathered stories from young people in Alaska, Norway, Canada, Greenland, the Seychelles, Fiji, Samoa, Kiribati and Tuvalu, whose futures will be at risk if nothing is done to stem rising carbon dioxide emissions.

They also trained them in photography, so they could track the changes themselves.

The results became an exhibition called Portraits of Resilience. We’ve drawn the experiences together in an interactive map, highlighting the common hopes and fears of these distant communities.

With thanks to Ilan Kelman and Christine Germano for the material

The post Mapped: Voices of people most vulnerable to climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

Many of the Maldives islands are at risk from rising sea levels (Pic: Nattu/Flickr)

By Ed King

Small island states have not given up hope of a global climate deal that restricts warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, a senior negotiator representing the Maldives has told RTCC.

Maldives ambassador Ahmed Sareer, who recently assumed the presidency of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) at UN climate talks, said the future of his country depended on an ambitious deal in Paris later this year.

“1.5C is still within reach… it’s clear that science has shown this is possible,” he said in an interview from Geneva, where negotiations are taking place this week.

Governments agreed to limit warming to 2C in 2009, but the more ambitious goal of 1.5C has long been advocated by small islands, fearful rising sea levels and climate-linked extreme weather events could submerge their countries.

The goal is still one of many proposals for a Paris agreement, referenced in the general objectives section of the draft text under discussion, as well as a document detailing what level of carbon cuts countries should collectively aim for.

Scientists say less than 1,000 gigatonnes of CO2 (GTCO2), or about 30 years of emissions, can be released from burning fossil fuels before warming of over 2C is locked into the earth’s system.

Report: Vast draft text won’t derail Paris talks, says UN climate chief 

Made up of 44 states and observers, some AOSIS members already face a daily battle against climate-related impacts, said Sareer, making these talks a personal battle for their delegates.

“You have countries already looking at relocation – in the Maldives we have erosion taking place, weather events and biodiversity being affected – the coral is in danger,” he said.

“These are things we are seeing on a day to day basis – other countries may not have the same level.”

Last June, the president of Kiribati said it was “too late” to save many islands from rising sea levels, warning of “total annihilation” for Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives.

Pushed on the lack of ambitious carbon cuts currently on the table, Sareer said he hoped the efforts by some small islands to ditch fossil fuels and invest in wind, solar and marine energy systems could serve as an example to developed and developing countries at UN talks.

In the past year the Cook Islands, Niue, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Aruba, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, St Lucia, and the Maldives all announced plans to be 100% renewable by 2020.

“Small island states are spending heavily on renewable energy, and we want to send the message that if we can do it then other countries should be able to do so,” he said.

“They have more resources. That should be the way forward.”

Comment: Exclusion of ‘loss and damage’ would make Paris deal useless

Discussions on what carbon cuts larger economies could consider will likely drag on throughout the year, although the EU, US and China have already indicated what targets they will pitch for by the end of the next decade.

This week in Geneva UN talks have focused on the construction of a negotiating text that all countries can agree on – resulting in a vast set of proposals.

These will have to be whittled down at a series of planned sessions between now at December, a process Sareer described as a “challenge”, although he added he was “optimistic”.

But he stressed the need for Paris to deliver a broad, legally binding agreement that would offer developing countries assurances they would receive significant help to cut emissions and adapt to changing conditions.

In particular, he said he needed more evidence of progress towards the $100 billion by 2020 in green aid promised by industrialised counties in 2010.

And he also confirmed the group’s commitment to ensuring the concept of loss and damage, or climate compensation, is enshrined at the heart of any agreement.

“We are a vulnerable group and need to be given thought when the parties come up with their positions,” he said.

“You can’t only look at an agreement that is mitigation – if it leaves out adaptation, finance and loss and damage. It has to be a package and fully consider all these components… for us it is an existential threat.”

The post Small islands will not accept weak Paris climate deal – official appeared first on Climate Home News.

Homes were damaged as high tides swamped the Marshall Islands on 9 October

By Sophie Yeo

Marshall Islanders have spoken of their growing fears after high tides have swamped some of the country’s major islands, flooding the airport and damaging homes.

The tiny islands, which sit just two metres above sea level, are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

In March 2013, king tides caused the government to declare a state of emergency, as 940 people were evacuated from their homes.

In an interview with RTCC Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, the Marshallese poet who addressed the United Nations climate summit last month, said the level of flooding was unexpectedly high for this time of year.

“It was just a high tide. It shouldn’t have created that much flooding. But just a small high tide is enough to create flooding now, because of sea level rise and a number of other factors,” she said.

“What’s happening now is we’re lying in wait until the next disaster happens. And we know it’s going to be worse.”

Jetnil-Kijiner stunned heads of state at the UN when she recited a poem at the General Assembly, written orginally for her seven-month old daughter.

“We deserve to do more than just survive – we deserve to thrive,” she said. “Dear matafele peinam, you are eyes heavy with drowsy weight so just close those eyes, baby and sleep in peace because we won’t let you down you’ll see.”

The UN’s science panel recently reported that up to 15% of small islands could be wiped out if sea levels rise by just one metre.

This is not a prospect for some distant future—a report by the UN Environment Programme released in June said that around some Pacific islands, the ocean is rising four times faster than the global average. In the western Pacific, the ocean is rising by up to 12mm a year, it said.

The flooding is a symptom of these higher waters, as storm surges and tides encroach further onto the islands.

Also speaking to RTCC, the country’s education minister Hilda Heine said that the constant flooding was having a long term detrimental effect on children’s education.

Schools are shut down due to lack of drinking water as salt permeates the supply, while classrooms are used for shelter.

“During the last wave in Majuro, some of our schools were closed down in some cases for more than a week, and we used the classrooms as homes to take care of the families that had their house damaged,” she said.

The next round of international talks on limiting global warming to below 2C start in Bonn next week. Countries hope to have the outline of an agreement ready for a high-level meeting in Lima, Peru, in December.

Last week Marshallese foreign minister Tony De Brum tweeted the latest pictures from the country’s coastline, saying they illustrated “what it means to be living with climate change”.

What it means to be living with #climate change. #Kingtides breached sea wall at Majuro Airport yesterday. MinTdB pic.twitter.com/FxCVgXLry3

— Tony de Brum (@MinisterTdB) October 10, 2014

The Marshall Islands, alongside other small island states, have called on governments to increase their ambition on tackling climate change, tightening the agreed target to 1.5C, instead of 2C.

They fear they could be forced off their islands if climate change gets much worse.

The president of one small island nation, Kiribati, has already purchased land in Fiji, which could be used to house his people if they are forced to migrate.

Under a business-as-usual scenario, UN scientists have predicted that the world could be around 5C hotter by the end of the century, which means governments will have to take sharp action to reduce their emissions quickly if the small island states are going to survive.

A group of ‘Pacific Warriors’ have this week decided to take action themselves.

Thirty men and women from 13 Pacific islands have set sail towards Australia in traditional canoes that they made themselves.

On Friday, they will paddle into the harbour of Newcastle, the world’s biggest port, to stop coal exports for a day. The port ships around 560,000 tonnes of coal every day, and if it were a country would be the 9th highest emitter.

The islanders, which are part of the green group 350.org, will then travel across Australia to tell the story of their sinking homelands.

Milañ Loeak, one of the Marshallese ‘Warriors’, said: “Stopping one day of coal exports alone won’t keep our homes above water, but it marks the rise of the Pacific Climate Warriors, and the beginning of our defence of the Pacific Islands.”

The post Concern mounts in Marshall Islands as high tides swamp capital appeared first on Climate Home News.

Residents of the Solomon Islands say rising sea levels have forced them to evacuate some atolls (Pic: UN Photos)

By Ed King

A proposal in the journal Nature by two academics that the 2C target in international climate negotiations should be scrapped has provoked a mixed response.

David G Victor, a University of California professor and Charles F Kennel, once of NASA, argue the goal is unachievable, impractical and scientifically tenuous.

“Politically and scientifically, the 2C goal is wrong-headed,” they write, saying it will be impossible to achieve given soaring levels of global carbon dioxide levels, which hit a new high for a 12-month period in 2013.

Citing an 18-year stall in global temperatures, they call for a wider “index” of climate forcers and risks to be used to measure progress towards addressing the problem.

“Patients have come to understand that doctors must track many vital signs — blood pressure, heart rate and body mass index — to prevent illness and inform care. A similar strategy is now needed for the planet,” they say.

Complex background

If it sounds scientifically sensible, politically the UN talks are not that simple.

This, remember, is an arena where a planned fortnight of negotiations can be paralysed over a disagreements on what should top the agenda.

Ronny Jumeau, a Seychelles diplomat who speaks for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), says he feels the critique presented by Victor and Kennel is slightly simplistic.

Their assertion that 2C was accepted uncritically by nations “shows an inadequate understanding” of the debate in 2009 over its adoption, he says.

Far from being a universal agreement, it was at the higher end of what small islands demanded.

AOSIS have long argued for a target of 1.5C, which it says will better protect its members, many of whom are low lying island states acutely vulnerable to rising sea levels.

“According to what we’re hearing from the scientists, a 2C and even a 1.5C goal is still technically and economically feasible,” he says.

“While such a goal may indeed appear to be simplistic, just look at the difficulty the international community has had in adopting it, especially since the negotiations are not just about the climate and the science, but also the economics and the politics.”

The US lead climate envoy Todd Stern knows this to his cost.

In August 2012 he gave a speech at Dartmouth College where he said that the target of hitting 2C should be removed from the talks.

US chief climate envoy Todd Stern (Pic: Center for American Progress/Flickr)

Instead he called on countries to develop an agreement that could be modified over time, taking into account new greener technologies not yet developed.

“This kind of flexible, evolving legal agreement cannot guarantee that we meet a 2 degree goal, but insisting on a structure that would guarantee such a goal will only lead to deadlock,” he said.

Despite its strong call for the world to take urgent action on emissions growth, Stern’s 2C comment was greeted with a volley of criticism from the EU, small island leaders and African states.

It’s revealing to note that the next time he made a big set-piece speech, at Chatham House in 2013, he did not mention the 2C target once.

Stern is not alone.

A quick analysis of the last 36 national submissions to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change reveals the 2C target was mentioned just 10 times, with the EU, Africa and small island states the most frequent.

This seems significant.

Those documents represent the positions of country groupings and individual states on how a climate treaty set to be agreed in 2015 could work, and what its targets should look like.

Far from 2C dominating the thinking of the 190+ countries engaged in climate diplomacy, it appears it is one of a series of indicators they are considering in the lead to 2015.

Others include the level of financial flows from rich to poor, the state of the world’s carbon markets and developing a measure for the fairness (or equity) of a new agreement.

@rtcc_edking Climate negotiators talk a lot and regularly recall the 2°C target – guess question more how we translate it in short/long term

— Paul Watkinson (@pwatkinson) October 2, 2014

Pete Ogden, until recently a White House climate advisor, wrote more about the range of goals in an article published in Foreign Affairs two months ago.

He says other “collective targets” should be added to the 2C goal and the text for a 2015 deal.

These include a date when global emissions should peak, he writes. It could also include a year when the world goes carbon neutral, a concept Ban Ki-moon alluded to at his summit.

As emissions rise and the door to curb warming closes, further goals will need to be added, included a greater focus on adaptation and perhaps compensation.

“We’re very close to the ceiling on 2C… we need to have a much more open debate about climate change,” John Prescott, one of the architects of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, told the Guardian.

Unwelcome distraction

But for now, there seems to be a consensus among those involved in the talks that abandoning the 2C goal would be counterproductive.

The process has enough problems and needs to build on its recent wins, like the New York meeting, says Michael Jacobs, former climate advisor to UK prime minister Gordon Brown, and quoted in the same Guardian piece.

“15 months out from the Paris conference and a week after a successful summit put climate change back on the international agenda is completely the wrong time to consider abandoning that commitment.”

And Bill Hare, a scientist who leads Berlin-based Climate Analytics, admits the 2C target isn’t perfect, but argues it’s a “good composite indicator” of impacts and risks.

“Without the emission pressures of the 2C limit there would effectively be a green light for continued massive expansion of coal and other fossil fuel intensive infrastructure in the next decade,” he says.

Reality check

What the Nature article has achieved is exposing the intense nervousness in the political and scientific communities over efforts to address climate change.

If Victor and Kennel wanted publicity, they have got it, publishing a paper that’s the equivalent of kicking the UN climate process in the balls.

In the two decades since talks on climate change started, emissions have spiralled, hitting a new annual high in 2013.

But their dismissal of 2C seems brave, given the warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on what warming above this level could mean.

The IPCC WGII study released in April warned the risks of “abrupt and irreversible changes” such as Arctic melt and the death of coral reefs would increase disproportionately with warming between 1-2C.

Another blockbuster study, backed by nine countries and called the New Climate Economy report, says avoiding 2C is economically possible if countries rapidly implement green policies in the coming 15 years.

And for Jumeau, who carries the future of 44 states on his shoulders when he takes part in UN negotiations, this academic debate over 2C ignores the plight many countries face today.

“Being realistic means recognising the complexities of the economics and the politics as well as of the science.  As the article itself acknowledges, “actionable goals have proved difficult to articulate from the beginning of climate-policy efforts”, he says.

“How realistic is it to expect the international community to just throw out the findings of IPCC AR5 which – for all the weaknesses and inadequacies some may find in it – represents the voice of the scientific community as officially recognised by the negotiations?”

The post Backtracking from 2C goal abandons island states to the waves appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: Harald Hoyer/Flickr

By Tony de Brum, Jean-Paul Adam, and Maxine McClean

While many have traditionally associated us island states as inevitable victims of the warming planet, the opposite is true. 

We are leading the rush to the greatest global energy transformation the world has seen since the industrial revolution.

Lying out in the middle of our vast oceans, this might not seem a natural choice for our islands.  But after years of subjecting our fragile economies and communities to the high cost of imported fossil fuels, we are moving to a new energy paradigm.

In 2008, a global oil price spike forced the Marshall Islands Government to declare a national economic emergency, with the nation no longer able to pay for the imported diesel used to generate up to 90% of the country’s power.

After the energy policy review that followed, the Marshall Islands chose a different path.  More than 95% of its vast outer island communities – spread out over a million square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean – now power their livelihoods by the energy of the sun.

Pushing ahead

Through initiatives like the Majuro Declaration for Climate Leadership and the CARICOM Regional Energy Policy, we have set ourselves some of the world’s most ambitious targets for renewable energy and energy efficiency, throwing down the gauntlet for the big emitters to follow our lead.

For example, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Aruba, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, St Lucia, and the Maldives are all striving to be 100% renewable by 2020, and Tokelau has already made it happen.

Part of this, of course, is self-interest:  there is no group of countries anywhere in the world where the “win-win” for the economy and the environment is more profound than in our island nations.  When we switch to clean energy, it is not only good for the planet, but it is also good for our economies, our health and our energy security.

But there are also global interests at play.  While our emissions are miniscule, there is no reason our island nations cannot be the world’s powerhouses for the demonstration and uptake of renewable energy technologies, both tested and new.

For example, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, which is already being tested on offshore islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as in the Caribbean, and has the potential to deliver gold-standard renewable energy to large coastal urban centers in more than 40 countries worldwide, including the US, Canada and Japan.

Leadership

Thankfully, some of the world’s biggest economies have already seen the light.  Germany’s Energiewende has set Europe’s industrial powerhouse on track to reach an 80% renewable energy target by 2050, and at one point last May, 75% of the German grid was pulsing with clean green power.

Despite signs of progress, two-thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions around the world still come from the energy sector and we continue to lock in just as much high-emitting energy infrastructure as we do new renewables.

According to the IEA, for every $1 of delayed investment now, it will cost us $4.30 after 2020 to compensate for increased emissions if we are to keep global warming below 2C.

Thankfully the costs of many renewables, including wind and solar, have dropped significantly in recent years, making groundbreaking large-scale projects like the Port Victoria Wind Farm in the Seychelles possible, and in turn saving the country almost 10,000 barrels of oil a year.

As world leaders gathered in New York for the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit, the loud message from all of us was that the fossil fuel era is over and that the renewables revolution is here to stay.

Here in New York, our island leaders launched a new “SIDS Lighthouses Initiative” to register our renewable energy needs, and match them with new financial tools and sources of support that can turn our sustainable energy dreams into reality.  For our communities, our countries and our common purpose,  nothing could be more important.

Tony de Brum  is the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands. Jean-Paul Adam is the foreign minister of the Seychelles. Maxine McClean is the foreign minister of Barbados.

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President Anote Tong in the Arctic (Pic: Greenpeace)

By Sophie Yeo

The case has been made with science, with doomsday predictions, with emotional pleas.

But so far none of it has been enough to convince the world to save Kiribati, the 33 tiny islands in the Pacific ocean so vulnerable to climate change that they could soon be nonexistent.

So Anote Tong, the president of the island nation, has taken to comparing himself to a polar bear.

Somehow, he said, these animals elicit more of a response than do the 100,000 human population of Kiribati when talking about the impacts of climate change.

“I know that in the past there was a lot of focus on the polar bears. In my attempt to get attention on our own situation I draw a comparison that what happens to the polar bears will also be happening to us in our part of the world,” he told RTCC.

President Tong had just seen a polar bear himself. He was speaking from the Arctic, where he was reviewing the impacts of climate change ahead of the landmark climate change summit taking place in New York today.

He said he can see how the bears, like the people of Kiribati, face the prospect of losing their homes very soon. The UN’s science panel recently asserted that it was “very likely” that the Arctic would be ice free in the summer by the middle of the century. Glaciers are also shrinking fast.

Vulnerable

Kiribati needs global temperatures to be contained at below 1.5C if they are to survive into the next century. Currently, the target of international negotiations is 2C – and even this looks ambitious.

Although the islands of Kiribati, straddling the equator, are about the furthest a country can get from the poles, they are in line to feel some of the severest impacts, as sea levels are forced up by the melting land ice.

“I saw for myself with my own eyes the huge sheets of ice from the glaciers, and imagined that if that was to melt then obviously it’s going to mean a lot more trouble for us and a lot of trouble for other people,” he said.

Discussion of how Kiribati will cope have already transcended the academic into the practical. Earlier this year, president Tong finalised the purchase of 20 square kilometres of land in Fiji, 2,000 km away this year, which will help to ensure the country’s food security and could become a landing site for refugees.

The forecast looks bad for Kiribati. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the UN’s science panel predicts that the world could be around 5C hotter by the end of the century, while sea levels could rise by almost a meter.

Kiribati lies an average of two metres above sea level. Not only is the land vulnerable to erosion, but more severe storms would make life on the islands impossible.

Ban Ki-moon hope

This is what leaders must understand when they meet in New York today, says Tong.

“I have no choice but to engage with the debate. I have no choice because the future of my people is on the land. It’s very important the other leaders understand the way we feel and the challenges we face. It’s an issue that cannot solve itself. We’ve got to have good strong leadership here,” he said.

Because for the islanders, the debate is not about higher taxes, political ideology, or any of the other elements of the debate on climate change.

It is about culture, identity and life itself, says Tong.

“I don’t know how old I’ll grow to be, but I can guarantee you, I will live and die here, and if I need to build my own island I will try to do that.”

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PIc: Hadi Zaher/Flickr

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UN climate chief Christiana Figueres (Pic: UNFCCC/Flickr)

By Christiana Figueres

Many thanks go to the organizers for hosting this Third Conference on Small Island Developing States and for hosting this Multi-stakeholder Partnership Dialogue on Sustainable Energy.

I am honoured to be here and excited for the great potential this dialogue holds.

This potential excites me because the transformational change to sustainable energy, energy from renewable sources that is efficiently delivered and used, means so much to so many.

Immediately, it means affordable and abundant energy produced at home for those who have historically had to import fuel at great cost.

It means clean air and water that protects pristine places and public health. It means a path to meet the internationally agreed goal of limiting warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

It means that in the long term we hand a healthy planet, with minimum climate change and maximum development potential, to our children and grandchildren.

Every dialogue that takes us one step closer to seizing this great opportunity is good, and this dialogue is even better as it promotes partnership and cooperation that scales up and speeds up this global shift.

Leadership

As this dialogue advances, I ask that you consider two lessons learned in the international process to address climate change that may make it easier for each of you to achieve your desired outcomes from this dialogue.

First, we have learned that a “you go first” mindset hinders progress and a “let me lead” attitude accelerates progress. And second, we have learned that partnering is a catalyst for getting the best results for both partners.

So in the pursuit of sustainable energy, widespread access and energy independence, it is the early adopters and those who seek strong partnerships that have the most to gain as the world moves towards clean, sustainable energy.

This is certainly true for investment and industry leaders already reaping the reward of installing renewables such as solar and wind, seeing bottom line gains from energy efficiency and profiting from partnerships that change the energy paradigm.

And it is increasingly true for governments of the world. In particular, it is true for Small Island Developing States, which have emerged as leaders willing to act first at home and forge partnerships abroad to improve results.

The examples of this are abundant.

From Tokelau becoming the first state wholly run on renewables, to the Marshall Islands plan to electrify outer islands using solar and the world’s largest solar-powered hospital opening in Haiti, islands states are showing that ambition now benefits communities in cost, energy access and access to social services.

And they are not doing it alone. The Majuro Declaration from last year’s Pacific Islands Forum is an example of the political partnership that points policy towards climate neutrality and away from the danger zone.

The 10 Island Renewable Challenge in the Caribbean is an example of a practical partnership that attracts investors eager to capitalize on islands’ shift from expensive diesel to solar, wind and geothermal energy.

These actions political and practical stand to make islands incubators of energy innovation, where natural resources—beaches and forests, land and sea ecosystems—are safeguarded for generations, even as island communities develop and grow.

The concurrent activation of the SIDS DOCK, the Green Climate Fund and the Climate Technology Centre and Network make this an opportune moment to put in place domestic policy and multilateral partnerships that open the door for sustainable energy.

Momentum

With the Secretary General’s Climate Summit later this month, a draft new, universal climate change agreement on the table in Lima later this year and the commitment to enact that agreement in Paris in 2015, this is our opportune moment to build on the strong foundation that small islands have laid to date.

It is the moment for islands to set ambitious sustainable energy goals, to seek partners that help accomplish those goals and to bring those goals to the world stage so that the benefits of development powered by clean, sustainable energy are visible to all.

In this context, the aggregate results from this dialogue hold great potential to bring the ambition from islands to all lands the world over.

It is exciting, yes, but it will only happen if you, the participants and stakeholders in today’s dialogue, listen, learn and leave here today with the resolve to bring these results to the wider world.

Each of us has a role in meeting the great challenge of climate change, and this means each of us has a role in making sustainable energy a key part of the path to sustainable development – whether you are a government looking to attract investment, an investor looking for new markets or an energy consumer looking for a responsible choice.

I ask you to recognize your role, seize this opportunity and do your part to bring clean and efficient energy to every island and every country in the world. Let’s do it so the islands that are here today are here to stay.

This is a transcript of a speech delivered to delegates at the 3rd Conference on Small Island Developing States in Apia, Samoa, on September 3.

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Ban Ki-moon was given the title of ‘Tupua’ or ‘chief’ during a traditional ceremony in Saleapaga, Samoa, ahead of the UN small islands conference (Pic: UN Photo/E. Schneider)

By Sophie Yeo

Over 3,000 people have gathered in Samoa for a once-in-a-decade discussion on the future of the small island states.

Climate change is set to dominate talks between delegates, led by the presidents and prime ministers of almost all the islands. For these tiny countries, rising sea levels caused by warming temperatures poses an existential threat.

“It is time that we recognise climate change for what it is: a collective crime against humanity,” said President James Michael of the Seychelles.

“Climate change is robbing island nations of their right to exist. We must save our future together.”

Speaking at the event, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said small islands were a “magnifying glass” exposing vulnerabilities countries across the world are likely to face in the future.

“The plight of small island developing states highlights the moral case for climate action,” he said.

“By failing to act, we condemn the most vulnerable to unacceptable disruption to their lives.”

In an interview published in the Sydney Morning Herald the World Bank’s climate envoy Rachel Kyte said rich nations had an “obligation” to help island communities adapt to changing conditions.

“Some will argue that this is an actual issue of justice and an actual issue of rights” given the role rich nations have played in emitting greenhouse gas emissions to “poison” the atmosphere,” she said.

The UN’s science panel recently warned that around 15% of Pacific islands could be wiped off the map by 1m of sea level rise. Oceans are rising four times faster than the global average around the islands.

RMI President says “all we can achieve here in Samoa will be moot if we don’t address the greatest threat: climate change”. #SIDS2014

— Thom Woodroofe (@thomwoodroofe) August 31, 2014

Partners

Talks, which continue until Thursday, will focus on building partnerships that will bring ideas for a more sustainable lifestyle on the islands into fruition.

Almost 300 partnerships have already been formed, including a Google-backed scheme to use Google Earth and mapping technology in ocean protection.

The Conference will culminate in “Samoa Pathway” – a blueprint to guide sustainable development in the islands.

The first draft, issued before the meeting, called for financial support for the small island states, as well as supporting new renewable energy and disaster risk reduction initiatives.

Small island leaders met for the first time in Barbados twenty years ago. The Samoa meeting is the first small islands conference since 2005, when representatives met in Mauritius.

But the islands had limited success in implementing the outcomes of these meetings.

Despite the ambition of the small island states in combating climate change, their capacity to do so is limited without the financial backing of richer countries. So far, this support has not been forthcoming.

Ban said that UN agency chiefs would work together to ensure that this year’s plan would be better implemented that before. The UN heads of climate, development and disasters were all present at the conference.

At #Islands2014 conference in Samoa, speaking at several events http://t.co/B5mYPo6uLR #Climate2014 pic.twitter.com/HZM7qsaSpc — Christiana Figueres (@CFigueres) September 1, 2014

The gathering is a crucial waypoint before the UN Secretary General hosts his climate summit in New York on 23 September.

RTCC understands that leaders will draw up their contribution to the summit during the meeting.

“SIDS [small island developing states] will have an important role to play,” said Ban.

“You can tell the largest emitters what action you expect from them. You can show how you are working to build resilience and create the green economies of the future. You can set an example for the world.”

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Pic: Hadi Zaher/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Global attitudes towards small island nations must be overhauled if the UN’s climate summit is to come to a credible conclusion, according to Nauru’s UN ambassador Marlene Moses.

Moses, who represents the alliance of small island states (AOSIS) in New York, said they are often ignored by the world’s big emitters.

This blind spot extends to the UN itself, she said, despite its attempt to concentrate attention on the islands by styling 2014 as the International Year of Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

“There needs to be a paradigm shift in terms of how the global community and international institutions, including the United Nations, focus on the SIDS priority. At the moment we feel the international community has not accorded it the appropriate attention,” said Moses, in an interview with RTCC.

She said that the countries, which are among the most vulnerable in the world to the impacts of climate change, are “stuck in a trap” of being “overpromised but under-delivered”.

Existential threat

The low lying islands could become uninhabitable due to climate change. The UN’s science panel recently warned that 15% of Pacific islands could be wiped out by 1m of sea level rise. Their bleak future has already prompted residents to ask for asylum in New Zealand.

But the spectre of mass migration is unlikely to spur action at an international scale, said Moses, who said that raising the relocation issue at the UN climate talks was unlikely to help their cause.

“Already the signs are there that climate change is an existential threat. If they are disregarding that now, I wonder whether using this as a tactic will draw international attention. It will be a bit of sensationalism, but in the long term I really do wonder whether it can be used as a tactic,” she said.

In September, a once-in-a-decade conference of the small island nations will take place in Samoa, offering a rare opportunity to collectively address climate change and sustainability.

The conference will be attended by heads of state and UN agencies, including UN development chief Helen Clark and former Ireland president Mary Robinson. Moses says it will be an opportunity to seek new partnerships and raise the profile of the SIDS within the international community.

It will precede a landmark UN climate summit to be hosted by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York on 23 September, where leaders have been invited to declare “bold” new actions on climate change. AOSIS will decide its contribution to this summit during the Samoa conference.

“We now call on the international community who have stated their promises to help us to be disciplined enough to keep their word,” said Moses.

“Without the voice of the SIDS you won’t have a credible climate regime in Paris. Without our opinion and our priorities, the post-2015 development goals will not be universal. The UN secretary general’s climate summit will not be credible without the moral voice of the most vulnerable group.”

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Pic: Didier Baertschiger/Flickr

By Olivia Santiago

Small island states are among the most vulnerable countries to climate change.

They face the collapse of their coastal ecosystems and economies due to rising sea level and extreme weather events, warned a UN science report released in March. Another report by the UN Environment Program shows their growing vulnerability will cost trillions of dollars per year.

This is why, at the UN climate talks, the small island states, including countries like the Seychelles, Marshall Islands and Kiribati, are calling for a loss and damage mechanism that is separate from adaptation.

Loss and damage occurs when adaptation and mitigation fails, for example, the relocation of an entire country due to encroaching sea levels.

But the largest-emitting countries are reluctant to put loss and damage on a separate platform from adaptation and mitigation, because the money to finance the mechanism would have to be drawn from a separate source different from the US$ 100billion Green Climate Fund.

Exclusion

Since 1991, these “drowning” countries have been pushing for loss and damage to be a separate, distinct category under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

They finally made headway at last year’s climate change conference in Poland, where the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage was established under the Cancun Adaptation framework.

But while the decision marked progress for loss and damage under the UNFCCC, regional areas are misrepresented.

Despite being the strongest champions for loss and damage, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is not represented on the loss and damage Interim Executive Committee, which is developing a two-year work plan for how the mechanism will be implemented by Lima.

“AOSIS was the architect of the committee they found themselves not on,” says Seychelles ambassador Ronald Jumeau, chief spokesperson for the small island states.

Too late

In Lima, all recommendations to the mechanism will be assessed by the Interim Committee, which will then establish a permanent loss and damage committee in 2016 as part of the agreement made in Warsaw.

The valuable inputs and opinions of AOSIS need to play a formal role in the decisions made by the Interim Committee in Lima, which will then anchor the loss and damage framework leading up to Paris.

The small island states must have a permanent position on the final committee when it is created in Lima. Parties have agreed to revisit the mechanism and its structure at COP22 in 2016, but by then, it may be too late.

The demand for an inclusive mechanism that is separate from adaptation will increase as the impacts of sea level rise cause irreversible damage. The world’s smallest 52 island states bear the disproportionate burden of the negative side effects of climate change, despite contributing less than 1% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

Small islands face complete extinction. It is just and fair that countries who face permanent loss and damage most immediately should have a place at the table.

Olivia Santiago is a researcher in Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab

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LDC member Kiribati faces having to evacuate some of its low-lying islands as a result of rising sea levels

By Sophie Yeo in Bonn

It is already too late to save many small island states from being swamped by rising seas, according to the president of Kiribati. 

Even if the world agrees to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, “total annihilation” is now inevitable for Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives, with “drastic impacts” expected within the next 20 years, warned Anote Tong.

“Whatever is agreed within the United States today, with China, it will not have a bearing on our future, because already, it’s too late for us.  And so we are that canary,” Tong said in an interview on CNN.

Carbon dioxide, which is the main driver of climate change, remains in the atmosphere for centuries after it has been emitted. This means that the world is already ‘locked in’ to a certain level of global warming in addition to the 0.8C already experienced.

Last week, Marshall Islands foreign minister Tony de Brum said that rising seas had caused World War Two skeletons to be washed from their graves.

US and China

China and the US are the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, which warm the planet. This causes the sea level rise which is now threatening to inundate the low-lying small island states.

The US announcement of strict new regulations for coal-fired power plants was welcomed this week in Bonn, where negotiators are discussing a new UN climate change treaty, set to be signed in 2015. But Tong said he felt thees efforts are too little, too late.

A special report on the small island states in the UN’s latest science report, the IPCC, warned that, even with severe emissions reductions efforts, the temperature increase in the Pacific was likely to exceed 1.5C by the end of the century.

And a report from the UN Environment Programme released last week warned that sea level rise around the small island states could be up to four times the global average of 3.2mm per year. In the tropical Western Pacific, where a large number of islands are located, sea level rise of 12mm per year was measured between 1993 and 2009.

Negotiators from small island states are pushing for the globally agreed target of a 2C limit to global warming to be revised down to 1.5C, because of the existential threat that this poses to their nations.

Tong said that, while it might be too late for his own country, he hoped that it could provide a lesson that stronger action is needed on climate change.

He said: “Hopefully, that experience will send a very strong message that we might be on the front line today, but others will be on the front line next – and the next and the next.”

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(Pic: Flickr/Mikigroup)

By Gerard Wynn

Countries must take account of new research showing higher long-term sea level rise than previously expected, when they set new carbon emissions targets, a negotiating bloc of small island states said.

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) was commenting ahead of the next round of UN climate talks, from June 4-15, which are meant to lay the groundwork for a global deal next year.

The focus of a new deal will include a new round of carbon emissions targets from 2020-2030.

World leaders will also decide whether a present agreement that warming should not exceed 2C above pre-industrial levels is ambitious enough.

They will base that decision on a present expert review of the goal, called a “structured expert dialogue”, timed to coincide with the publication of a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which found that the evidence for climate change was stronger than ever.

Countries will decide, for example, whether the goal should be strengthened, to limit global average warming to 1.5C.

In their submission to next week’s talks, AOSIS listed a number of reasons why the world should limit warming to 1.5C, including to slow sea level rise and ocean acidification and to protect coral reefs.

“The difference between impacts of … a long term temperature increase of 1.5 degrees above pre‐industrial levels and … 2 degrees Celsius is enormous, in terms of the additional burden such added impacts would imply,” they said.

They quoted the recent IPCC report, and research published last year which said that sea levels would rise by 2.3 metres for every 1C rise in temperatures in the long term, implying a serious impact on low-lying islands from sustained 2C warming over millennia.

And they quoted recent research, published in March in the journal Environmental Research Letters, which showed that a third or more of the territory of many small island states would be underwater after sustained 2C warming over two millennia.

Review

Some scientists say that a 1.5C warming threshold is already out of reach, given 0.8 degrees warming has already taken place, and there is inertia where the Earth is still warming in response to greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Additional warming is also expected as countries reduce local air pollution which presently reflects light back into space.

The United States and the European Union have already said that the IPCC report should be a key input in the review, without suggesting that the 2C target should be strengthened.

In other submissions ahead of the Bonn talks, Mexico said that a new climate agreement could be a legally binding decision under the existing 1992 Convention on Climate Change.

That would avoid writing a new treaty or protocol, enabling countries to sidestep the need for ratification of a deal by national parliaments. US ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol foundered in Congress, where it was roundly defeated.

Countries might agree a new annex under the existing Convention, for example, which included carbon emissions targets and could be updated from time to time according to the latest science on the urgency to tackle the climate problem.

“Mexico proposes to entrust a group of legal experts to draw a list of instruments that … work without being subject to the rigorous process of amendments that require parliamentary approval, such as in the areas of trade law, certain environmental agreements, and illicit drugs,” it said in its submission.

“One alternative could be annexes that can be updated on a regular basis.”

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Pacific states like the Marshall Islands are having to contend with rising sea levels linked to climate change (Source: UNOCHA)

By Sophie Yeo

A 1.5C limit to global warming is now “out of range”, according to the chair of the UN’s most recent report on climate change, Ottmar Edenhofer.

This diagnosis, if realised, could be disastrous for the world’s small island states. The climate impacts associated with anything beyond 1.5C could lead to some of the remote Pacific islands, such as the Marshall Islands and the Maldives, becoming completely uninhabitable, as rising sea levels erode their low-lying coastlines.

But, speaking in London yesterday, Edenhofer said that he personally believed a 1.5C scenario was no longer possible. His view was based on the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which assessed the economic and technological options for dealing with climate change.

He commented that, politically, it is a difficult thing to say: “I have to acknowledge there are lots of people on planet Earth who are very committed to 1.5C.”

He said that, when the final text was being negotiated between scientists and governments in Berlin last week, he realised “how fragmented the global community is, and how diverse value systems are.” This, he said, makes it difficult to disregard a 1.5C target, regardless of its difficulty.

The IPCC report notes that there are very few papers which deal with the feasibility of limiting warming to a maximum of 1.5C.

This temperature likely to be exceeded in all but the most extreme emissions reduction scenario, the UN panel said in its September report on the scientific evidence for climate change.

Without action to reduce emissions, sea levels could rise by up to 74cm by the end of the century, says the report, although regional variation means that small islands could suffer disproportionately.

“In the tropical western Pacific where a large number of small island communities exist, rates up to four times the global average … have been reported between 1993 and 2009,” according to the part of the report dealing with the impacts of climate change.

1.5C target

Climate change negotiators from the small island states continue to push for the global target of 2C, agreed at UN climate talks in 2010, to be revised downwards to1.5C to reflect their extreme vulnerability.

The UN has agreed to review the possibility of a 1.5C target next year. But the most recent IPCC report notes that the challenge of stabilising emissions is growing, as the world collectively fails to put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

On Saturday, the panel announced that, without additional efforts to reduce emissions beyond what is in place today, surface temperatures are expected to increase by up to 4.8C by the end of the century.

To keep temperatures below 1.5C would require “a lot of negative emissions”, said Edenhofer, referring to technologies designed to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, as “you cannot decarbonise the whole economy”. Measures would have to be taken to compensate for transport, for instance, where it is difficult to capture or decarbonise the emissions.

But such measures come with their own political complications. Debates over bioenergy were some of the toughest, he added, due to the land use and food security issues arising from the additional space required to grow the plants.

Speaking alongside Edenhofer yesterday, UK Secretary of State for energy and climate change Ed Davey said that UK policy continued to focus on 2C.

“That’s not a tough target in planetary terms,” he said, adding that it would still lead to a huge amount of problems, and that it would require a substantial global effort to stay within this limit.

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Source: Flickr/mrlins

The UN has made addressing the potential destruction of many Pacific low lying islands in the Pacific priority for 2014.

The next 12 months have been named the International Year of Small Island States (SIDS), allowing UN agencies to help islands better manage their natural resources, protect the environment and create green jobs.

“For many Small Island Developing States future development is dependent on a very narrow resource base that is constantly challenged by the high-risk impacts of climate change and natural disasters,” said UNEP chief Achim Steiner.

Baron Waqa, the President of Nauru, acknowledged that his island risked losing “entire languages, cultures, histories, and all the progress that came at such a high cost for those who came before us.”

He added: “We celebrate this special year with the sombre knowledge that unless action is taken soon some islands won’t make it to the end of the century.”

Development agenda

Sustainable development is a particular challenge for the SIDS, where modern energy sources are limited and expensive. Energy generation is therefore the main source of economic instability as well as CO2 emissions, consuming more than 50 million barrels of petroleum every year.

A September summit in Samoa will seek to map the exact requirements of the states as the UN works on a set of Sustainable Development Goals that will act as the guiding principles of development post 2015.

As some of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, the Small Island States are also some of the most ambitious in pushing for strong action at the level of the UN, which hopes to sign of a global treaty on climate change in 2015.

At last year’s UN General Assembly, the Pacific Islands presented Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with the Majuro Declaration – a document signed by an alliance of states, confirming their determination to show leadership in tackling climate change.

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Source: UN Photos

By Baron Waqa, President of Nauru

The story of the world’s island people is one of struggle and fortitude.

It traces the journey of our ancestors who set out across vast oceans as part of the first human migrations, and chronicles the wanderlust of some of history’s first traders and explorers who continually searched for new opportunities over the horizon.

It is the experience of stolen people brought to new lands in chains, and yet who still managed to persevere against all odds. It is the tale of villagers who helped turn back the tide of imperialism when the world was at war, and our shared experience as island people in the march to Independence.

During the International Year of SIDS, we recognize the unparalleled ecological and cultural diversity of the world’s small islands and honor the remarkable contributions their people have made to our heritage as global citizens.

I invite people from all Island Nations to celebrate this legacy by teaching your friends and neighbors about our music and poetry, our song and dance, our food and customs, and the many other ways we have left an indelible mark on history.

In that regard, I would like to share with you the memorable words of Derek Walcott, the Nobel Prize-winning author from St. Lucia (an island that has produced a disproportionate number of great writers), which powerfully evokes the sights and sounds familiar to anyone raised on an island in his poem of the same name, and I quote:

“So, like a diarist in sand,
I mark the peace with which you graced
Particular islands, descending
A narrow star to light the lamps
Against the night surf’s noises, shielding
A leaping mantle with one hand,
Or simply scaling fish for supper,
Onions, jack-fish, bread, red-snapper;
And on each kiss the harsh sea-taste,
And how by moonlight you were made
To study most the surf’s unyielding
Patience though it seemed a waste.”

From the literary giants who gave voice to our people, to the artists whose harmonies and brush strokes captured our pain and hopes, island people have forever enriched the tapestry of the human experience. In recognition of their legacy, let us remember them this year and for all years.

Such achievements, of course, are not limited to those told in history books.

The impact of island people is felt in the communities where they raise children and care for families, in laboratories where they are discovering new technologies, in villages where they teach children about their past and prepare them for the future, on sports fields where they are breaking world records, and within these walls where island leaders are finding solutions to some of the biggest problems of our generation.

But even as we celebrate these contributions, we are mindful that progress did not come easily and that our work is far from complete.

We recall that Small Island Developing States remain uniquely vulnerable to the unprecedented impacts of climate change, environmental degradation, and the cruel indifference of a globalized economy and political system.

And though we have taken important steps to address these issues at home, we know that fully meeting today’s challenges will require action from the entire international community.

Our history shows again and again how our people somehow manage to overcome insurmountable obstacles through our unique strength and dignity, but no people or country has faced the risk of total inundation from rising seas before.

Yet, that is exactly what we must contend with—losing entire languages, cultures, histories, and all the progress that came at such a high cost for those who came before us. We celebrate this special year with the somber knowledge that unless action is taken soon some islands won’t make it to the end of the century.

We also know that in our stories there is a lesson for the whole world. For though we are uniquely vulnerable to climate change, no country or region is immune from its impacts.

The onslaught of extreme weather around the world this past year shows the extent to which we are in this together. So while the SIDS year may call attention to the danger facing small islands, never forget that by protecting us we safeguard the whole world.

I will, therefore, conclude with words from another Nobel-prize winning islander.

Bishop Filipe Belo who won the Peace Prize along with Jose Ramos Horta for working to bring freedom to Timor Leste said in his acceptance speech, and I quote: “I speak of these things as one who has the responsibility to bear witness to what I have seen and heard, to react to what I know to be true, to keep the flame of hope alive, to do what is possible to warm the earth for still another day.”

These remarks were delivered on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States at launch of the International Year of SIDS at the United Nations

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People from the largest greenhouse emitting countries struggle to appreciate their environmental impact because they are so disconnected from the rest of the world, the Seychelles Environment and Energy Minister has said.

Tourism provides one means to change attitudes and awareness towards conservation and climate change, according to Prof. Rolph Payet. This in turn would make them put more pressure on their governments when they return home.

“People in rich countries don’t appreciate the consequences of their actions. They say if they can afford it, what is the problem?  They don’t understand that their actions are destroying the planet,” said Payet.

“It would help if there was more awareness from voters. I have had the opportunity to travel and I understand why people in big countries think that way, they are so disconnected from the rest of the world. Tourism is a gateway that can help educate them,” he told RTCC.

“We’ve shown that this is possible. Where you have investments from tourism you can enhance the quality of the environment, you can enhance the protection of species. We’ve had animals come off the endangered list as a result of conservation action financed by tourism.”

To do this however, Payet says the environmental message must be repackaged to get away from the “treehugger” label.

“That makes people switch-off and think they are just going to be told don’t so this don’t do that. The message has to be friendlier, more understandable and we have to engage with tourists,” said Payet.

The low-lying Seychelles are vulnerable to rising sea level, increased storm surges and the effects of ocean acidification.

The Seychelles is launching tourist tree planting and ocean education programmes to engage rather than lecture visitors.

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Ban Ki-moon has accused governments of opting out of climate action despite being aware of the potential dangers.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly’s (UNGA) opening debate on a range of global challenges, the UN Secretary General said more urgency was required.

“The severe and growing impacts of climate change are there before our eyes – yet too many people in power seem wilfully blind to the threat,” said Ban.

“This is a time of turmoil, transition and transformation – a time when time itself is not on our side.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on a visit to climate vulnerable Kiribati. (Source: UN/Eskinder Debebe)

“Last December, Member States agreed to reach a legally binding agreement by 2015. Now, you must make good on this promise. Time is running out on our ability to limit the rise in global temperature to 2°C,” he urged.

“Changing course will not be easy. But to see this as only a burden misses the bigger picture. Sustainability and the green economy offer compelling opportunities to promote jobs, growth, innovation and long-term stability.”

The Presidents of two vulnerable small island states, Nauru and the Marshall Islands also used the UNGA platform to discuss climate change.

President Christopher Loeak of the Marshall Islands said that while his country had little means to fund its climate adaptation efforts, it would do what it could.

“The growing realization that, however, wrongful, we must finance some of our own adaptation efforts is perhaps the most compelling reason to rapidly expand our private sector,” he said adding that it was time for more cooperation between the developed and developing world.

“The time is now over for endless North-South division and the all-too predictable finger pointing must end.”

Low lying small islands are at risk from rising sea levels and increased storm surges which increase coastal erosion and taint freshwater supplies with sea water. Some nations have already had to evacuate villages from smaller atolls, although mass migrations have been ruled out for now.

President Sprent Dabwido of Nauru also called for more cooperation through the UN’s climate negotiations.

“Small islands may be the canary in the coalmine, but we are all staring a global catastrophe right in the face,” he warned.

“If multilateralism is to have any credibility, then we must move to an emergency footing and those countries with the greatest capacity must immediately begin mobilising the significant resources necessary to remake the energy infrastructure that powers the global economy,” said President Dabwido.

Leaders from Brazil, Serbia and Slovakia also raised the challenge of climate change during the session.

Lithuania meanwhile called for access to energy not to be used as political blackmail.

There are a number of climate change related events in New York to coincide with the UNGA meeting this week including the launch of the DARA Climate Vulnerability Monitor and Climate Week NYC.

Related stories:

Ban Ki-moon outlines goals for Sustainable Energy for All project

Vulnerable small island states call for Bangkok climate talks to “close the gaps”

East Timor could become home to Kiribati’s climate refugees

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It’s easy to think that the Rio+20 summit was a complete disaster – but that is simply not the case.

While many have accused the document of being weak on deadlines and benchmarks – for many of the isolated and previously ignored ecosystems in the world, just being mentioned on the document offers an opportunity for governments to turn those words into actions.

In particular there are four areas we believe have emerged as minor winners from the summit.

Before their impact was not directly recognised but now oceans, deserts, mountains and small islands have pride of place in the sustainability debate.

The High Seas

With over 20 paragraphs designated to them, along with several side events throughout the two week conference, the oceans and seas were one of the big winners of the 2012 Earth Summit.

Ocean researchers and campaigners have accused the text of being watered down – but there are still several positive announcements in the text.

Susan Lieberman, Director of International Policy for the Pew Environment Group has identified five key areas which will benefit from being mentioned.

“The final outcome document contains good recommendations on ending overfishing, taking action to stop illegal fishing, phasing out harmful subsidies, eliminating destructive fishing practices, and protecting vulnerable marine ecosystems,” she said.

VIDEO: UNESCO’s Wendy Watson-Wright on why Oceans need to be taken seriously.

Lieberman also says the acknowledgment of many countries at the conference ‘recognising’ the need for international management of the sea is a progressive step.

The final document commits “to protect and restore, the health, productivity and resilience of oceans and marine ecosystems, and to maintain their biodiversity, enabling conservation and sustainable use for present and future generations.”

Drylands

The threat of land degradation, desertification and drought around the world are becoming clearer year on year.

The outcome document pledges to “strive to achieve a land degradation neutral world in the context of sustainable development.” It also said this aim should act as a catalyst for both public and private finance.

With specific mention to the LDCs and Africa, the outcome document acknowledges the social and economic importance of land management and its contribution to economic growth, biodiversity, food security, eradicating poverty, improving water security and addressing climate change.

It also stresses the global dimension of the problem and calls for scientific methods of assessing and monitoring desertification and the impacts on it from weather and climate.

This move was supported by the announcement of a scientific collaboration to fight desertification in Africa by institutions in Africa, Brazil and France.

The document recognises the importance of sustainable land management, particularly for countries in Africa and other LCDs (© Kusal Gangopadhyay/UNCCD Photo Contest)

Speaking as the conference came to a close, Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary from the UNCCD said: “From Rio1992 to Rio 2012 we have learned that desertification, land degradation and drought are drying up The Future We Want.

“I am pleased to acknowledge a new concept calling for a paradigm shift to build a land degradation neutral world was born here at Rio20.”

Small Island Developing States (SIDs)

The SIDs were given a particularly special mention by the outcome document stating they: “remain a special case for sustainable development in view of their unique and particular vulnerabilities.”

Those vulnerabilities include their small size, remoteness, narrow resources base as well as their exposure to environmental and economic shocks both from climate change and natural disasters.

The document called for enhanced efforts to support SIDs – including the strengthening of the United Nations System support – to face the emerging challenges for the island nations.

The outcome also called for the convening of the Third International on SIDs to move forward to address the challenges the nations face. The conference will be held in 2014.

Mountains

Just three paragraphs of the Rio+20 outcome were designated to Mountains, but within these three paragraphs the document set out the global benefits of mountain ecosystems, the vital role mountain people have in ensuring sustainable development and called on international support for mountain development in developing countries.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development has praised the outcome.

Dr David Molden, Director General of the Centre said: “The conference urged States and international agencies to take urgent holistic action to conserve mountain ecosystems and biodiversity, to protect the environment and to eradicate poverty and inequality for sustainable mountain development.

The document acknowledges the threat to mountain communities from climate change and glacier retreat (© Amit Poudyal)

The document calls for “a long-term vision and holistic approaches, including through incorporating mountain-specific policies into national sustainable development strategies which could include, inter alia, poverty reduction plans and programmes in mountain areas.”

It also sets out the threats to mountain regions, including impacts of climate change and deforestation, land use change, natural disasters and mountain glaciers, as well as recognising the role they play as a home to many poor communities around the world.

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