Rising seas ‘the most terrifying of all climate change impacts’
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent; Editing by Janet Lawrence
27 April 2011 OSLO (Reuters) – Sea level rise is the “most terrifying” impact of climate change and rich countries are showing scant leadership in addressing the threats, the incoming chair of a U.N. alliance of small island states said on Tuesday. Marlene Moses, the U.N. ambassador of the Pacific island state of Nauru, the world’s smallest republic, urged developed countries to do far more to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and to provide climate aid to developing states. Nauru was chosen on Tuesday to take over from Grenada in late 2011 as chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), a 43-member group whose members from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean are especially at risk from rising seas. “It’s the most terrifying of all climate change impacts,” Moses told Reuters in a telephone interview. “I once said that climate change is as big a threat to security as an invading army. Sea level rise will force people to relocate”. She faulted rich nations for failing to do enough. “We are really waiting for a leader to emerge from the developed world,” she said. “We are going through not only a climate crisis but also a leadership crisis. This is holding up the multilateral process.” She said Nauru’s 10,000 people, living on a rocky island of 21 sq kms (8 sq miles) in the western Pacific, were primarily at risk from disruptions to water supplies, erosion and damage to the ocean exacerbated by climate change. “But for low-lying atolls — the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, sea level rise is really a threat. Relocation is a threat. It is imminent,” she said of the risks that states could be swamped by rising seas. …
