The prime minister of Samo, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa has said that the world must step back from the brink of climate disaster to save the people of the Pacific from obliteration.
According to reports, the PM issued a desperate plea for action on the eve of a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is expected to deliver a scientific “final warning” on the climate emergency.
“We’re all impacted, but the degree of the impact is in the particular circumstance of countries. So our low-lying atoll countries, it’s right there, we’re living with it,” Mata’afa was quoted as saying. “There are already examples in the Pacific of communities, whole communities, that have relocated to different countries and they’re really having to address issues of sovereignty through loss of land.”
Mata’afa warned that all countries would face escalating damage unless they acted now, insisting that this is a collective issue and that no one is free from the impacts of climate change.
“So it’s very important for the global family to hold to determinations [to cut greenhouse gas emissions] that have already been made. It seems more immediate for us [in the Pacific] but it’s still impacting all of us.”
The IPCC is expected to produce the final summary of its latest appraisal of global climate science. Known as the “synthesis report”, it is expected to warn that the world has only a few years in which to achieve a profound shift to a global low-carbon economy, or face catastrophe from extreme weather, including rising sea levels, intense heatwaves and devastating droughts, heavier floods and a cascade of other impacts.
The report will also set out ways in which to achieve this low-carbon economy and to keep global heating within the crucial threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, beyond which the IPCC has warned of impacts that will rapidly become catastrophic and irreversible.
Mata’afa said: “With the work of the IPCC, there is a glimmering hope that there is a body of evidence that can support the decisions that need to be made. [People in Samoa are] having faith that [this message] will bear through.”
IPCC reports take six to eight years to compile, so this will be the last before 2030, by which time the world may have already breached the 1.5C threshold unless greenhouse gas emissions fall rapidly in the next few years.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
