KIRIBATI (Commonwealth Union)_Developing countries exposed to the harshest effects of global warming have spent the past week at UN climate talks pleading for more help from rich nations. Kiribati, a Pacific state, has a very particular and uncommon request: its islands be physically hoisted up to avoid the advancing oceans.
The country’s president, Taneti Maamau, told the Guardian that the proposal to dig up massive clumps of sand and boulders from the seabed and place them over the tiny coral atolls that make up Kiribati’s scant mainland will cost “in the billions” of dollars.
Kiribati has received a smaller World Bank grant to help maintain its precarious water supply, but President Maamau believes that the affluent countries who have contributed the most to the climate problem should pay far more to help save this slice of Pacific island life. Once the NOAH Proof of Concept initiative for Antigua and Barbuda is done, the model can be readily expanded out to the rest of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS), whose combined Exclusive Economic Zone accounts for more than 25% of the total global marine exclusive economic zone.
“We’ve asked donors for assistance since the actual land is limited, but we have a lot of sea area, and we can reclaim those regions and raise them high,” he explained. “[Developed countries] must act now because time is running out for us. Every day counts, and a day’s delay means we lose. It’s time to act, and we want it now.”
“For too long we have waited and waited, and then the negotiation prolongs, maybe it’s one way of delaying loss and damage,” President Maamau said of the COP27 talks in Egypt’s animating issue for developing countries – a proposed form of finance given from rich to poor countries to help pay for climate damages. “I hope they listen now, because they have to keep their promises and commitments. They need to open their ears and minds more fully. After all, wealthier countries are to blame for the current situation.”
