While billionaires spend eyewatering sums to go to Mars the Marshall Islands can’t secure international funding to save the country from a climate disaster, its minister of natural resources has warned.
“There’s these billionaires that are building rocket ships to go to Mars… All we’re asking is give us the money to make sure the Marshall Islands can continue … to exist in the world,” John Silk told The Independent at the Cop27 summit in Egypt. “We’re talking about a nation that is on the brink of disappearing.”
Mr Silk said his country become an independent nation in 1979 and since then had faced the prospect that it may not exist in the decades to come because of rising sea levels. “Where do you go?” he asked.
The World Bank has described the threat that climate change poses to the Marshall Islands as “existential” and said that if existing sea level rise trends continue the country will face costly choices to protect essential infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.
Rising seas are projected to endanger 40 per cent of buildings in the capital, with 96 per cent of the city at risk of frequent flooding induced by climate change, the body says.
At stake, said Mr Silk, was not just an island but a culture and heritage. That includes Marshall Islanders’ skills at navigating the ocean, their ability to make canoes out of the tallest trees that are now not growing so high, or stories passed down through generations that are immortalised in the island’s rocks but are at risk of disappearing into the sea.
At some point in the future, the government may have to decide which islands to save and which to abandon, he said.“People are now migrating from island to island because of rising sea levels,” he said.
Mr Silk said his country needed funds to build sea walls, to raise some of the islands up, and build better structures to protect the country from sea level rise and cyclones.
“We can’t do it without your help,” he said, of rich countries.
He pointed to the $100 billion of climate finance annually that rich nations pledged to help developing countries cope and combat a rapidly heating planet back in 2009. Over a decade later that funding gap has still not been reached.
“We haven’t seen it, where is it?” he asked.
John Silk, natural resources minister of the Marshall Islands, urged rich countries to help save his disappearing island
(The Independent)
As for the contentious issue of whether rich nations should compensate vulnerable countries for the irreparable loss and damage they have experienced due to rising global temperatures fuelled primarily by developed nations burning fossil fuels, Mr Silk said there should have been a fund “yesterday”.
The Independent spoke to the minister on the sidelines of an event in which leaders and activists from Pacific Island states shared their experiences of climate change. The message from those leaders was clear: at Cop27 countries must pay loss and damage reparations now or at least establish a programme that will set up a fund in the next two years.
“We came out of Glasgow disappointed,” said Seve Paeniu, the minister of finance of Tuvalu. “We’re on the frontline of climate change and sea level rise. We need the money now.”
All agreed negotiations have been going on too long and said that still countries were resisting calls to pay compensation.“They’re really shying away from any mention of a special fund,” he said.
Mr Silk, who was watching the panel event at the Moana Blue Pacific Pavilion, said it felt like a long time ago since the Kyoto Protocol in 1992 kicked off the Cop process.
“There’s another Cop next year and another Cop following it, and these will continue for the rest of our lives,” he told The Independent. “At some point in time may be the Marshall Islands won’t be there.”
He invited the United Nations to hold a Cop in the Marshall Islands – if the islands still exist.
Mr Silk also spoke of his grandson who he said had recently visited him, along with his parents, from Hawaii. One day, as they were sitting on Mr Silk’s porch at high tide, the ocean came up almost to the front door, he said.
“He said, ‘Grandad, why don’t we move?’” said Mr Silk. “I said ‘move where? We have no higher ground’.”
“There is no more time to waste, we have to move and this Cop has to come up with something really tangible for all of us to take back home and tell our grandkids that there’s a future here,” he added.
Source link
