Small islands rising seas.

• Author: Sadat, Nemat
• Position: Rising sea levels

"You know that with a sea-level rise of over 1.5 metres, hundreds of millions of people would be dead. They would simply be wiped out," President Mohamed Nasheed of the Republic of Maldives told the UN Chronicle just two days after he addressed other world leaders at the 2009 UN General Assembly Summit on Climate Change.

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The threat posed by rising sea levels has been the centrepiece of climate change negotiations, the main issue emphasized by Small Island Developing States, also known as the SIDS.

With less than a month to go until the December 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, many who regard global warming as some vague phenomenon are perhaps beginning to wonder how their lives might be affected down the road. But there is no need to look into the future to see that SIDS are already threatened by escalating tides, cyclones, flooding, damaged crops, increased disease, the inundation of coastal areas and the loss of freshwater supplies. SIDS are indeed on the "front lines" of climate change. The post-industrial age of mass fossil fuel consumption has dramatically accelerated the amount of carbon dioxide ([CO.sub.2]) to dangerous levels, damaging the environment and infrastructure of many SIDS and other low-lying regions.

The poorer countries flanked by large bodies of water--who have contributed the least to global warming, including rapid sea-level rise--now find themselves at the precarious mercy of the historical polluters. Developed neighbours in the global North are losing their credibility very quickly, Ambassador Ronny Jumeau, Permanent Representative of the Seychelles to the United Nations told the UN Chronicle. "Let's say my neighbour flooded my house entirely on his own, while I didn't contribute. Yet, I have to now borrow money from him, then pay him interest for the rest of my life, in order to clean the mess in my house that he is responsible for. This is dishonest."

THE SEEDS OF AN ALLIANCE

At the United Nations, 43 of the world's smallest island and low-lying coastal countries, representing the Member States most susceptible to change in climate, forged a coalition called the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). While AOSIS represents more than one quarter of the world's countries, together they account for less than one per cent of global carbon emissions. Once the former President of the Republic of Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, gave a dramatic speech referred to as the "Death of a Nation" at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and at the UN General Assembly in October 1987, the idea of a bloc of island nations gained momentum. Three years later, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first assessment on climate change coinciding with the 1990 Second World Climate Conference in Geneva, and SIDS was born. Ambassadors of small island States refer to President Gayoom as the "brainchild" of their coalition. Twenty two years later, in the UN General Assembly Hall, President Nasheed told world leaders that they must "discard the habits that have led to 20 years of complacency and broken promises on climate change," made in 1990.

NEGOTIATING POSITIONS VS. INTERESTS

At a press conference at UN Headquarters in July 2009, Ambassador Desama Williams, Permanent Representative of Grenada to the United Nations and the current chairperson of AOSIS, stressed the need to reduce the level of temperature increases to a figure less than 1.5[degrees] Celsius, both as short and medium targets. She said, "Without adequate global commitments to make deep cuts to temperature increases caused by greenhouse gas emissions, small islands would be the first to be washed away into the sea."

To prevent islands from sinking into the ocean, each Member State should put aside the stand-off surrounding the thorny adaptation and mitigation issues and focus on their collective global interest. Thus far, positional arguments, a term in negotiations referring to arguing over precise numbers, have brought little success. What's needed now to overcome the political challenges is an enduring and practical solution that all Member States can rally behind--a realistic and substantive climate policy that ensures economic growth and sustainable development in all regions of the world.

But how can tiny islands like Comoros or Palau carry enough bargaining chips to convince the international community to make this issue a call to action? The cruel irony, according to Ambassador Jumeau, is that SIDS find themselves in a tough bind if they talk any louder than they do: "We can't go on a crusade around the world. The more noise we make, the more we scare away investors and tourists and destroy our own livelihood," the Ambassador said.

While these countries face limitations on how much they can blame the industrialized North, Ambassador Jumeau pointed out that "the climate change debate doesn't happen in a vacuum. We maintain good relations with our former colonial masters, France and the United Kingdom, so we cannot just come out and bash them tomorrow. And we don't have natural allies in the South either; even that requires fierce negotiations. So what you have is a group of increasingly frustrated States."

THE BEACONS OF THE WORLD

But while frustration may be prevalent among SIDS, they have been crucial drivers in pushing climate change on to the United Nations agenda and instrumental in...