UN talks offer little help for soaring losses, say climate-hit states

BONN: From Fiji to St. Lucia, small island nations have taken every opportunity to flag the growing risks of climate change to their land and people at UN talks in Bonn - but their cry for help has fallen on deaf ears, officials and experts said on Friday.
Over the past two weeks, leaders of those states have spoken consistently of the loss of life and property caused by powerful storms in the last two years, and the existential threat to their low-lying territories as seas rise on a warming planet.
Dominica´s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit described how 90 percent of buildings on his Caribbean island nation were damaged or destroyed when it was hit by Hurricane Maria in September, causing losses equal to more than double the size of its economy, and decimating its forests. Two months later, 95 percent of the country lacks electricity, water systems are not functioning properly, and many residents are still living in shelters, he told the Nov. 6-17 conference, held in Bonn but hosted by Fiji.
“We are on the front line (of climate change), and this is not a metaphorical war, or a metaphorical line. . . it is one in which we bury the dead, console the grieving, nurse our wounds and call out for reinforcements,” he said on Thursday.
With Fiji leading the proceedings, its prime minister has also evoked many times the damage wrought there by powerful Cyclone Winston last year, and called for help to strengthen island developing nations against increasingly extreme weather and higher seas, which scientists link to climate change.
But the governments of those vulnerable countries expressed disappointment on Friday at the talks´ lack of progress on concrete measures to boost support, particularly funding to pay for growing losses.
The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) adopted a declaration entitled “The Urgency of Now”, which it said reflected “grave concerns” about the pace of international efforts to address the climate change crisis.
Thoriq Ibrahim, environment and energy minister for the Maldives, which chairs AOSIS, said the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle global warming was “a remarkable diplomatic achievement”.
But “it will be judged by history as little more than words on paper if the world fails to take the level of action needed to prevent the loss of entire island nations”, he said in a statement.