Bush Leaves Small Island States to Sink

N E W Y O R K, April 19, 2001 -- Last summer, when the Micronesian ambassador to the United Nations visited his South Pacific island country, he found he could not get a decent traditional meal.

The taro crop, a staple for the inhabitants of the Federated States of Micronesia, has been completely ruined by soil salination brought on by rising sea levels due to global warming, Masao Nakayama explained.

"It's very scary to see a disaster up close, so close," said Nakayama, a native of the island of Onoun, one of the 2000 islands that make up Micronesia. "I never thought I would see this on my island."

On neighboring Kiribati, the effects of global warming are scarier. Kiribati (pronounced Kiri-bas) is just one of the world's low-lying island states and atolls in danger of being swallowed up by the rising sea as greenhouses gases discharged primarily by industrialized countries warm the oceans.

But last month, when President Bush ditched the Kyoto Protocol, he effectively told the I- Kiribati (as the inhabitants of Kiribati are called) their tiny nation comprising 33 coral atolls could sink for all it was worth.

Signed by 84 nations in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement that contains legally binding targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions and curb global warming. Under the terms of the agreement — which has not as yet been ratified — 38 industrialized countries agreed to cut greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2% by 2010.

From Friend to Foe

Scientists have recorded that carbon emissions leading to global warming have led to the thermal expansion of the oceans that is turning the sea, once the closest friend of small islanders, into a fierce foe.

Analysis from data from tidal gauges set up by the University of Hawaii and by Flinders University in Adelaide in Kiribati have shown that the sea level has been rising by 3.3mm a year for the past 25 years.

The effects are devastating. From increasing typhoons and hurricanes, coral bleaching and seepage of salt water into ground water tables, to the looming disappearance of low-lying coastal lands, some of the world most tiny and beautiful nations face a threat to their very survival and with it, the unique cultures they harbor.

At the dawn of the new millennium, Kiribati was the first nation to welcome the millennium. But by the end of the century, it could well face a more dubious first: the first nation to be wiped off the globe by man-made destruction.

Kyoto No More

Governments of small island nations have, in the past, issued pleas to the developed world to deal with the problem of greenhouse gases and help them cope with the environmental onslaught.

Last November, members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), a coalition of 43 small island nations from across the globe, made a dramatic plea to industrialized nations during the U. N. climate change talks at The Hague to reach a solution on containing global warming.

But at the White House at least, the pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

On March 28, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer made it clear that the Bush administration opposes the Kyoto Protocol. "It is not a treaty the president thinks is in the interest of this country, or would get the job done," said Fleischer.

For the international community and the extremely vulnerable small island nations in particular, Bush's abandonment of the agreement came as a low blow.

"The Kyoto Protocol is vital for all small island states around the world," said Tuiloma Neroni Slade, Samoan Ambassador to the United States and Chairman of AOSIS. "It is a lifeline for small island nations because it is the first international instrument that sets specific reduction targets and also marks out a time frame for this."

International ire against the Bush administration's stance of Kyoto has been swift and harsh, with several European heads of state expressing profound disappointment with the administration's dismissal of the agreement.

Experts worry that after years of painstaking negotiations to arrive at the current agreement, international consensus would break as it did at The Hague talks last November, which were suspended following a failure to reach a consensus among members. The talks are expected to resume in Bonn, Germany in July.

Poll Shots

Environmental groups and some EU member states have urged the international community not to abandon Kyoto. "If President Bush does not participate in the Kyoto Protocol, we think it's better that the U.S. gets out of the way because other countries," said Jennifer Morgan, director of World Wildlife Fund's Climate Change Campaign. "But what's more, I don't think President Bush is representing the public on this issue."

Polls show that a majority of Americans do not believe Bush's primary objection to the Kyoto Protocol — the economic burden it places on the United States — are justified.

An ABCNEWS poll conducted earlier this month showed that 61% of respondents believed the United States should join the treaty. The poll echoed an ABCNEWS/Washington Post poll in January that showed that Americans by a 17-point margin (56 percent to 39 percent) said protecting the environment was more important to them than encouraging economic growth.

For its part, the administration has maintained it remains commitment to containing global climate change, just not Kyoto. "The president believes global warming is a problem which needs attention," said a White House spokesperson. "The question is what can be done on the basis of sound science."

Sounds of Science

But for Nakayama, White House skepticism of the scientific basis of global warming is just hot air. "There are people who call it climate change, they read the statistics and question the scientific validity of the findings but when you go to my home, you see the impact of global warming. It's real and it's threatening."

In a broad-ranging report that collated the work of 3,000 leading scientists, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) a U. N. body set up to study the risk of human-induced climate change, predicted that sea levels will climb by 1 to 80 cms. in the next 10 years.

The study also found that the effects of global warming will be borne disproportionately by the world's poorest countries for effects wrought mainly by industrialized countries.

U.S. records on emission standards have only rubbed salt on the wounds of small island states. Although the U.S. is home to a mere four percent of the world's population, it produces 25% of its greenhouse gases.

Even China, which has no targets for the first phase of the Kyoto process given its economic burdens — a provision that earned Bush's ire — has shamed the United States' environmental record. After a crackdown between 1997 and 1999, China, the second largest contributor of the world's carbon emissions, cut down its greenhouse output by 17 percent.

The small island states want a 20 percent cut in emission of greenhouse gases - 80 percent cuts are required to stabilize the climate, according to scientists. Kyoto, for the tiny, beautiful island states, is a compromise they have embraced as they come to terms with the geopolitics of a world that makes no pretense of egalitarianism. Now even that seems a long time coming.