Pacific Think Tank Urges Policy Shift on Climate Change

On the eve of key climate talks in Copenhagen, an independent Pacific think tank has called for world leaders attending the conference to hear the region’s plight in battling rising sea levels.
With the low-lying Pacific nations struggling to adapt to a changing environment brought about by climate change, the Pacific Institute of Public Policy (PiPP) has released a briefing paper outlining the two factors which it considers the most important aspects of the debate as it affects the Pacific: (1) the human impact of climate change and (2) how climate adaptation measures should also cover meeting development challenges.
“In a changing climate, the development challenges remain the same,” said Mr Derek Brien, Deputy Executive Director of PiPP in a statement. “Adaptation needs to consider more than just climate-proofing infrastructure. Climate change adaptation is about development: water supply, sanitation, agricultural productivity, food security, urbanisation, economic development, health care and education.”
According to the PiPP many smaller Pacific nations, such as Kiribati (population 100,000), Marshall Islands (60,000) and Tuvalu (population 10,000), are looking to negotiate funds for relocation at the climate talks in Copenhagen as they face the prospect of becoming uninhabitable over the next fifty years. Relocation is not a straightforward matter, said the Institute, citing the example of the Carteret Islands, in Papua New Guinea, where land has become uninhabitable due to encroaching seas. Problems have arisen moving whole communities in order that they are able to provide for themselves and live harmoniously with neighbours in their new location.
“Climate change adaption also needs to facilitate choice migration”, says Derek Brien, “and that will require a shift in prevailing attitudes to the subject, as well as ensuring current and future generations of Pacific islanders have access to international standards of education to compete on the global stage.”
Calls for climate leadership

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Credit: djackmanson/flickr

Meanwhile as the start of the COP15 summit nears, the Pacific Conference of Churches has called on Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to exercise leadership to demand a fair outcome for Pacific countries vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The Council released a statement saying Mr Rudd should use his position as chair of the Pacific Islands Forum to argue for meaningful change on the issue.
“And once that is done then all the rhetoric about ’we are committing millions and millions of dollars into our Pacific year of climate change’ and all the other initiatives that Australia appears to be leading the way, all well and good. But please we are imploring Mr Rudd to strengthen this international instrument,” said Peter Emberson, the group’s climate change campaigns officer.
He added the organisation would be sending a 15-strong conference to the climate conference. Read more!

NZ Glaciers Continue to Retreat: Report

A recently-released report on the state of New Zealand’s glaciers has found they have, once again, lost a significant portion of their ice mass.The National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA), the NZ-based organisation which conducts both commercial and non-commercial research in the field of environmental sciences, has found “continued loss of glacier mass” in its end-of-summer survey according to its news release.

The statement quoted NIWA Snow and Ice Scientist Dr Jordy Hendrikx as saying the cause of the loss of glacial ice was the weather patterns over the course of the year from April 2008 to March 2009.

Dr Hendrikx said a combination of factors were to blame.

“This was mainly due to the combination of above normal temperatures and near normal or below normal rainfall for the Southern Alps during winter, and La Niña-like patterns producing more northerly flows creating normal-to-above normal temperatures, above normal sunshine, and well below normal precipitation for the Southern Alps particularly during late summer,” said the NIWA release.

Surveys of the glaciers, which have been taking place since 1977, use images taken from a small fixed wing aircraft of over 50 glaciers in the Southern Alps and Kaikoura to assess the well being of the glaciers. Researchers can then analyse the pictures taken to determine the position of the snowline after the summer melt but before the first winter snowfall, providing an index of the mass balance or “health” of the glaciers of New Zealand, says NIWA.

Though glacial retreat has been used as an indicator of the effects of global warming elsewhere in the world, the Institute warns that the situation is more complex in New Zealand as the mass and volume of the country’s glaciers are “…sensitive to changing wind and precipitation patterns as well as to temperature.”. Read more!