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Radio Australia
Fri, 25 Sep 2009
MELBOURNE, Australia ---- Kiribati President Anote Tong says he is "heartened" by greater awareness about the affects of climate change, especially on low-lying island nations like his own.
Mr Tong will make his presentation to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, September 25 New York time.
He's told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat programme he will be frank, but he believes more people are now listening.
"I will be quite frank, because I've been saying these things for the past few years," he said.
"But I must say that I'm much more heartened now then I was four, five years ago when nobody was listening. I'm getting a very clear message and of course the support that we're getting particularly from our neighbours, and of course your Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been very much a strong advocate on this, and we welcome this.
"I sense a strong political commitment to doing something and to come to a conclusion at Copenhagen and I think there is a realisation of the more urgent case for the most vulnerable."
Mr Tong says the affects of climate change on the low-lying atolls of Kiribati are more visible every year.
"You really have to look at this over a period of time, and I say this because I've been seeing changes in my short life time. Over the years virtually on a yearly basis you see the change and it is putting pressure on people and people are putting pressure on government to do something about it... we don't have the resources to do all of it."
Kiribati, and many other smaller nations, are calling for a resolution at negotiations in Copenhagen in December for the bigger polluters to pay for the cost of climate change.
Mr Tong says on Kiribati there is already a lot to be done. "Just before coming out (to New York), during parliament session, I was asked many, many questions, most of them requests for sea defences to be built in areas that have been eroded," he said.
He says the symptoms of climate change are "touching on livelihoods", as seawater engulfs all-important taro crops and in some cases corrupting residents' fresh water supplies from underground water lens.
But time is running out, and some villagers are already on the move.
"We are just moving them away from the shoreline," he said.
"Where there are villages that are no longer there, they will have to move further up. Further up is just maybe another metre up from sea level. Kiribati is made up of atolls, averaging two metres above sea level, so there is very little space where we can move to relocate."
Mr Tong and his fellow i-Kiribati know better than most how urgent a good outcome at Copenhagen is needed.
"All the countries of the world will be affected by climate change in one form or another. The threat level will be different, timing will be different. There are those whose very survival is on the line over the next 20 to 30 years and of course the projections keep getting worse - they don't improve they get worse, so the timeline is getting short," he said.
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