Section:GDN 1N PaGe:23 Edition Date:190812 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 11/8/2019 19:47 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Monday 12 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •
World^23
Kate Lyons
Funafuti
As the leaders of Pacifi c countries step
off their planes in Tuvalu this week
for the Pacifi c Islands Forum, they are
being met by the children of the tiny
nation, who sit submerged in water
in a moat built around the model of
an island, singing: “Save Tuvalu, save
the world.”
The welcome sets the tone for a
meeting that will not only have the
climate crisis at the top of the agenda
- as it has been for many years – but is
being hosted by a country that the UN
says is one of the most vulnerable to
rising sea levels, which could render it
uninhabitable in the coming century.
Tuvalu’s hosting of the event pre-
sents it with considerable logistical
challenges , as more than a dozen world
leaders and an estimated 600 people
will descend upon a country w ith
a population of just 11,000. Tuvalu,
about three hours’ fl ight north of Fiji,
is grappling with an outbreak of den-
gue fever and the fact it has no supply
of safe fresh water. It is designated by
the UN as a least-developed country.
There are only three commer-
cial fl ights a week to Tuvalu, so most
attendees have had to fl y in on char-
tered military planes and roughly
75% of all the accommodation for the
forum has been built for the event.
“Tuvalu taking on this task, it’s
mammoth – everything won’t be
perfect, but it will be [done] with
the warmth and generosity of island
people,” Dame Meg Taylor, the sec-
retary general of the forum, said
yesterday in the capital, Funafuti. “I
think Tuvalu has been courageous to
host this meeting .”
The Tuvaluan prime minister,
Enele Sopoaga , told Guardian Aus-
tralia that hosting the conference,
which offi cially begins tomorrow, was
an opportunity his country could not
pass up. “The people of Tuvalu arevery, very strong, they are very fi rm
that they want to protect and save their
island and their people and their way
of life and their resources. ”
The Australian prime minister,Scott
Morrison, is likely to come under pres-
sure from Pacifi c island nations, wh ich
have repeatedly criticised Australia for
what they see as insuffi cient action on
the climate crisis. Sopoaga said Morri-
son was a welcome guest in his country
and he anticipated “positive and pro-
gressive discussions”, but said he had
concerns about Australia’s environ-
mental policies.
The positive relationship could
change if the future of his people was
not taken seriously, he said. “I hope
we can be more understanding that
the people of Tuvalu and small island
countries are already submerged,
are already going under water. If our
friend Australia does not show them
any regard, any respect, it is a diff er-
ent thing, we cannot be partner with
that thinking. I certainly hope we donot come to that juncture to say we
cannot go on talking about partner-
ships ... while you keep pouring your
coal emissions into the atmosphere
that is killing my people and drown-
ing my people into the water.”
Another signifi cant issue is that of
human rights abuses in West Papua. A
delegation from West Papua, includ-
ing the independence leader Benny
Wenda , was due to attend the forum as
part of the Vanuatu government’s del-
egation, but as of yesterday afternoonthe West Papuan group had not been
able to arrive in Tuvalu.
Australia is strongly supportive of
Indonesian sovereignty over Papua,
while the independence movement
has widespread support among sev-
eral key Pacifi c island nations.
Th is year will also be the fi rst time
a Fijian prime minister has attended
the summit since the country was sus-
pended in 2009 for refusing to call
elections. Though Fiji was reinstated
into the forum in 2014, its prime min-
ister, Frank Bainimarama , has never
attended, saying in 2010 that he would
not come while Australia and New Zea-
land were part of the group because
they wielded too much infl uence.
Bainimarama presided over the
UN’s leading climate change body
in 2017, COP23, and is a high-profi le
global fi gure in the fi ght against global
heating , alongside other Pacifi c lead-
ers such as Sopoaga and the Marshall
Islands president, Hilda Heine.
China’s battle for infl uence in the
Pacifi c is likely to emerge as another
theme. Tuvalu is one of a handful of
countries that have diplomatic rela-
tions with Taiwan , whose government
is seen as illegitimate by Beijing. The
forum secretariat is likely to want to
ensure there is no repeat of last year
when the Chinese delegation walked
out of a talk in Nauru, which also has
diplomatic relations with Taiwan.Fears for mental
health of people
in Green land hit
‘ecological grief’
Dan McDougall
Ilulissat and Tasiilaq , Greenland
The climate crisis is causing unprece-
dented stress and anxiety for people
in Greenland, who are struggling to
reconcile the traumatic impact with
their traditional way of life.
The fi rst national survey examining
the human impact of climate change
shows that more than 90% of Green-
landers fully accept the climate crisis is
happening, with 76% claiming to have
personally experienced global heating
in their daily lives, from coping with
dangerous journeys on sea ice to hav-
ing to put down sled dogs for economic
reasons linked to shorter winters.
The Greenlandic Perspectives Sur-
vey (GPS) , by Copenhagen University’s
Center for Social Data Science and the
Kraks Fond Institute for Urban Eco-
nomic Research , samples almost 2%
of the population.
According to its lead author, Kelton
Minor , the survey fi nally gives a voice
on climate change to Greenland’s most
remote and inaccessible communities.
He said: “The Arctic is a bellwether
for the future role of the climate
crisis in creating inequality and socio-
economic disruption. As countries
struggle to limit future risks and over-
all warming to 1.5C, many Arctic and
Greenlandic residents are already
living in regional climates that have
changed by more than this, in less than
a lifetime .”
According to the data, detailed in
a Guardian investigation carried out
across Greenland in the last month,
most residents believe that the climate
emergency will harm people, sled
dogs, plants and animals. The fi nd-
ing has r aised concerns over a growing
mental health crisis in the region.
The survey is revealed as the Arctic
faces potentially record warming lev-
els. According to the US’s National
Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) ,
Greenland has already lost a total of
more than 250bn tons of ice in this
year’s melt season.According to Dr Courtney Howard ,
the board president of the Canadian
Association of Physicians for the
Environment , who lives and works in
the Arctic, the intersection between
climate change and mental and phys-
ical health will become one of the
world’s major issues.
“Temperature change is magnifi ed
in circumpolar regions,” she told the
Guardian. “There is no question Arctic
people are now showing symptoms ofanxiety, “ecological grief ” and even
post-traumatic stress related to the
eff ects of climate change.
“We are challenging the medical
profession to acknowledge the world
we are inheriting ... we’re not training a
new generation of medical profession-
als to help people in a fast-changing
planet and this is intolerable .”Read the full investigation online at
theguardian.comClimate crisis clash looms as Pacifi c
leaders get together on tiny Tuvalu
▲ A meltwater
canyon on the
Greenland ice
sheet, which
is melting at
unprecedented
rates due to
global heating
PHOTOGRAPH:
SARAH DAS/PA▲ Fongafale island, part of the
Tuvaluan capital of FunafutiРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS