PARIS – President Obama pledge support Tuesday to island nations whose very existence is threatened by climate change, citing his childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii with the declaration: “I am an island boy.”
“Their population are amongst the most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change,” the president said after meeting with several of the island nation leaders on the second day of an international climate change conference.
“Some of their nations could disappear entirely and, as weather patterns change, we might deal with tens of millions of climate refugees in the Asia Pacific region,” he added.
But Obama did not alter the administration’s opposition to “loss and damage” payments from major economies based on historical emissions, and he did not budge on island nation demands that the world aim to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius instead of 2 degrees.
He said, however, that the United States would support the island nations, and the administration on Monday said it would give $52 million to the world’s poorest nations to deal with climate change impacts.
“These nations are not the most populous nations. They don’t have big armies,” Obama said. “But they have a right to dignity and sense of place ... and their voice is vital in making sure that the climate agreement that emerges here in Paris in not just serving the interest of the most powerful.”
The meeting capped Obama’s visit along with about 150 other world leaders who seek political momentum for climate negotiators seeking to seal an international deal that would reduce or slow the pace of greenhouse gas emissions. The meeting lasts another 10 days.
According to a 2001 report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with a 35-inch rise in seas, 85 percent of the Maldives could be “inundated,” barring costly adaptation measures. Indeed, the highest elevation in the small island chain, which is home to some 400,000 people but in total area not much bigger than Washington, D.C., is just 2.4 meters above present sea level.
And the Maldives aren’t even the most vulnerable of island nations. Also in 2001, the agency noted that just 35 inches of sea level rise would flood two-thirds of Kirbati and the Marshall Islands.
