WATERS ARE RISING: CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION MUST COME FAST

You can be sure that if rising sea levels forced the evacuation of the White House in Washington DC, the attitude towards global warming would be very different, writes Anote Tong, President of Kiribati since 2003. In this article, Tong writes that this is precisely what recently happened to one of the buildings of the presidential compound of Kiribati, forcing the president to move to higher ground. To the people of Kiribati, an island nation of just over 105,400 people and comprised of 33 atolls scattered in the central Pacific Ocean, global warming and the rising sea levels are very real threats. Indeed, at some point perhaps towards the end of the century, we will have to think about relocation. Water, or rather the scarcity of it, also poses one of the major challenges for several Pacific Island Countries, especially the Smaller Island States that have no river systems and have very sensitive groundwater resources typical of atoll island structures.