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| Mangrove plantations to help protect the Tuvalu coastline from erosion as climate change brings more storm surges. File: Oxfam/Rodney Dekker |
Tuvalu's prime minister says his country is being expected to provide unreasonably robust scientific evidence to prove it is a victim of climate change to qualify for international support.
Enele Sosene Sopoaga issued another stark warning to fellow negotiators at the Paris climate talks that without a binding deal to limit global warming, his tiny Pacific island nation could be wiped out.
He said the required evidence was hard to come by in a nation of only 12,000.
Tropical Cyclone Pam devastated its outlying coral atolls in March this year, and the government is still providing food aid to many residents who saw crops and homes destroyed.
After a meeting with the president of the climate talks French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, Mr Sopoaga said climate change was a challenge for the whole world.
"I think there's a moral challenge to people of the world," he said.
"Are we going to allow this to happen to some of our fellow nations?
"If we can reach the planets and ... the Moon, and we cannot save our own kinds, this is a shameful world."
Mr Sopoaga said that the deck had been stacked against small countries, like his, which do not have enough delegates to attend the vast numbers of working groups happening at the conference.
Almost 200 nations are meeting in Paris until December 11, trying to work out a deal to limit a rise in temperatures blamed on increasing emissions of greenhouse gases.
No deal yet but negotiators optimistic
Negotiations to agree on a draft text for a climate change deal to be debated by ministers in Paris next week are "not there yet", the chairman of the talks said.
Mr Fabius, who is also the chief negotiator, said two alternative new draft texts had been produced ahead of a Saturday deadline.
"I really hope that the spirit of compromise will allow us to move forward. I hope that the text I'm going to be handed will record new steps towards a compromise," Mr Fabius said.
Mr Fabius repeatedly declined to discuss areas of disagreement, and the executive secretary of the United Nations climate committee Christiana Figueres said that there was not one subject which was holding things up.
"It's important to understand that there is no one, single factor that can be advanced without the others. This is very, very much of a balancing act, it's a political balance, it's an operational balance, it is all part of a coherent and integrated effort to change the course of the economy," Ms Figueres said.
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| Leaders of island nations under threat by rising sea levels with US president Barack Obama at the World Climate Change Conference 2015 in Paris, France. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque |
Negotiators are in a better position than they were at the last major summit in Copenhagen in 2009 where talks ended in chaos, Ms Figueres said, adding she was optimistic.
Outside, demonstrators gathered to say that even the 2C warming target discussed by many was not enough to protect countries vulnerable to climate change and rising sea levels, including many island nations in the Pacific.
A study published this week showed that many from Tuvalu and its Pacific neighbours would consider migrating if the droughts, floods and sea levels continued to rise, though few have the money to do so.
Researchers projected that international migration would increase sharply by 2055 from Tuvalu, Kiribati and Nauru.
The study found storms and "king tides" are likely to worsen. Sea levels have risen about 20 centimetres in the past century.
The Australian Youth Climate coalition said the next generation would be left to pay the price for government inaction, and highlighted that some countries were not to be constrained by the 1.5C limit.
"In particular countries that we're calling on to listen to our message are countries that have been blockers in these negotiations so: Saudi Arabia, India, China and the US have all been pushing back really hard on the 1.5C being included in the text and these are the countries that we want to hear our voice because we're the ones who are going to have to live with the impacts of climate change," member Moira Cully said.
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