Pacific island nations are on the front line of climate change, yet despite being seen as the first victims, many are re-positioning themselves to lead the world in renewable energy infrastructure. Chief Bernard Tunim confronts the issue head-on: "We didn't create global warming but we are its first victims. The industrialized world must take decisive action at the Copenhagen summit before it's too late for everyone."
Pacific island nations are on the front line of climate change, yet despite being seen as the first victims, many are re-positioning themselves to lead the world in renewable energy infrastructure.
Chief Bernard Tunim confronts the issue head-on: "We didn't create global warming but we are its first victims. The industrialized world must take decisive action at the Copenhagen summit before it's too late for everyone."
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Standing in knee-deep water on Piul Island, Chief Bernard points to a decaying coconut stump nearly 200 metres offshore from the beach we are standing on.
"That used to be our shoreline only 10 or 15 years ago," he says. "Look how the sea is eating us away. We are only a small island, the king tides have already swamped our gardens and soon we’ll have to leave. The future of my island is now only for fish, not people."
Piul is one of 5 atolls that make up the Carteret Islands group in Papua New Guinea, where the 3,000 islanders who live on these beautiful yet vulnerable atolls are being recognised as the world’s first climate change refugees.
Preparations are being made to relocate them to nearby Bougainville, a large mountainous island, over the next year or two. For them, talk about climate change and rising seas is not an abstract concept but one that’s a hard reality.
Chief Bernard has no time for debates over whether the problem is man-made or not, the effect is the same for him and his people -- they’ll lose their homeland. Like many islanders, he worries that the debates by scientists and climate sceptics, along with government inaction, are delaying concrete action.
Photo shows Chief Bernard on Piul Island.
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