Pelenise Alofa at the Tuvaluan stall. Image by Josephine Latu.

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Josephine Latu – Pacific Media Watch.

Pacific activists have called for New Zealand politicians to take a tougher stance on climate change, for the sake of low lying island atolls.

Amidst the vibrant cultural fairs at Auckland’s Pasifika Festival last weekend, a petition was passed around by Green activists who hoped to sway government to committing to a 40 to 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, as well as assisting in climate change adaptation programs in affected areas.

The petition will also be presented this November at the UN’s 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) climate change meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

Spokesperson for the Kiribati Climate Change Network, Pelenise Alofa spoke at the festival’s Tuvalu and Kiribati stages – the most threatened island groups – urging Pasifika Kiwis to sign the document and “save the islands”.

Effects on the Pacific

“If we will not do anything now, Tuvalu will go under water,” she said.

Two of the islands that make up her home country of Kiribati have already been submerged, and in 2005, others were flooded by a high spring tide that washed away farmlands and swamped homes.

Meanwhile, rising sea levels – which scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) claim are an effect of global warming caused by high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – have forced the entire coastal village of Tegua in Vanuatu to relocate to higher ground in 2005.

In neighbouring Papua New Guinea, residents of the Carteret Islands have been driven to mainland Bougainville after seawater flooding ravaged crops and food gardens.

Scientists also calculate that Samoan shorelines have receded almost half a meter every year for at least the past 90 years.

“As Pacific Islanders we love our land, if there is a threat to our land, we have to stand up,” Alofa told Pacific Media Watch.

Lack of media attention, action

But so far, there has been no explicit acknowledgement of forced migrants due to climate change by Australia or New Zealand.

Alofa also said there was a lack of media attention both in New Zealand and the region to the issue.

“Our people are complacent. They don’t know much about this thing called climate change. They look at sea levels rising and just think it’s normal,” she said.

Alofa believes that industrialized countries need to take responsibility for the pollution they cause.

While scientific debate continues on how much of global warming can be attributed to human activities, leading emitters of greenhouse gases such as the United States, European Union and China renewed their pledges from last year’s COP 15 meeting to drastically cut emissions by 2020.

Oxfam figures show that collectively, small developing Pacific nations contribute less than 0.06 per cent of the earth’s greenhouse gas pollution.

Josephine Latu is a postgraduate communication studies student from Tonga at AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre who is also contributing editor of Pacific Media Watch.