Beijing Climate Centre

Pacific Islands meeting to align response to climate change

2009-10-16

The Pacific island officials plan to bolster their negotiating position for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December when they meet in the Marshall Islands at the Pacific Climate Change Roundtable next week.

A key focus of the three-day meeting in Majuro will be the Pacific's strategy at the global climate change meeting to be held in Copenhagen at which world leaders will attempt to hammer out an agreement on cutting back "greenhouse gas" emissions that are causing the Earth's climate to change, Radio New Zealand International reported on Friday.

One of the talks' organizers, Espen Ronneberg, who is climate change advisor to the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP), said the Pacific area will be among the first casualties of climate change.

Mark Lander, a meteorologist with the University of Guam's Water and Environmental Research Institute that is affiliated with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told officials in Majuro this week that sea level rise in Micronesia this decade has been three times the world average.

He said globally, the average is about 3 millimeters per year increase in sea level, but in Micronesia that increase is about 10millimeters per year.