Island 'doomed by climate change'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Island 'doomed by climate change'*
From correspondents in Wellington
June 05, 2008 02:21pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse
THE President of the low-lying Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati says his
country may already be doomed because of climate change.
President Anote Tong says communities have already been resettled and
crops destroyed by seawater in some parts of the country, made up of 33
coral atolls straddling the equator.
Although scientists are still debating the extent of rising sea levels
and their cause, Mr Tong told a news conference marking World
Environment Day that changes were obvious in his country of 92,000 people.
"I am not a scientist but what I know is that things are happening we
did not experience in the past," Mr Tong said.
"We may be beyond redemption, we may be at the point of no return where
the emissions in the atmosphere will carry on to contribute to climate
change to produce a sea-level change that in time our small low-lying
islands will be submerged," he said.
"Villages that have been there over the decades, maybe a century, and
now they have to be relocated.
"Where they have been living over the past few decades is no longer
there, it is being eroded."
At international meetings others had argued that measures to combat
climate change would hurt their countries' economic development.
"In frustration, I said, 'No, it's not an issue of economic growth, it's
an issue of human survival'."
Under the worst-case scenario, Kiribati would be submerged by the end of
this century and its people would have to be resettled in other
countries, he said.