Island nations see climate change up close: Column

For the citizens of the nations represented by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), climate change is not an abstract threat. They face immediate danger today.

Low-lying islands like Tuvalu and Vanuatu in the Pacific and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean are at risk of becoming uninhabitable as sea level rises in the coming decades.

There are many examples. Tuvalu and Nauru have suffered record droughts. During the 2012 drought, Nauru came within days of running out of drinking water.

On some of Papua New Guinea's outlying islands and in parts of the Solomon Islands, whole communities have been forced to flee their homes for higher ground as storm surges destroy coastal areas. The tragedies abound.

Small island states are on the frontline of a crisis that affects all of the world's citizens — a crisis that demands immediate action because we are all, like these frontline communities, running out of time.

In advance of the United Nations Climate Summit this week in New York City, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked world leaders to come prepared to deliver "bold pledges" to tackle climate change.

To amplify the need for urgent action and recognize AOSIS's unique voice in calling for this action, the Secretary General asked President Baron Waqa of Nauru, chair of AOSIS, to speak at the summit between the U.S. and China — the world's two biggest carbon polluters.

The president announced that one of their many contributions is to help the entire world see the availability of near-term solution. The Republic of Nauru commissioned a team of 30 leading experts, led by Dr. Robert Watson, former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to respond to this call by laying out concrete solutions available to reduce emissions and avert the worst impacts of climate change by acting now.

The report describes proven steps to begin immediate transformation to a low-carbon economy, including:

• Rapidly increasing efficiency in transportation, building, industrial and agricultural sectors using affordable commercially available technologies.

• Speeding the deployment of wind and solar energy with economic policies that encourage adoption and by eliminating fossil-fuel subsidies.

In the United States, too, communities face threats from climate change. These communities — like hurricane-flooded New Orleans and New York City, and the farm communities where crops are withering from drought — share a common bond with these small-island nations.

As the world's largest historical carbon polluter, the United States has an obligation to lead the fight against climate change, the greatest environmental threat humanity has ever faced.

Global leaders must find the political will to act now, before it is too late — for all of us.

We must do this. We can do this.

Trip Van Noppen is president of Earthjustice which contributed to the AOSIS report..

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