In his address to the 2005 World Summit on 14 September, United States President George Bush made reference to the thousands of people trying to piece back together their lives after the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, which he described as “one of the worst natural disasters in American history”. Less than two weeks later, the same stretch of the Gulf Coast was hit by Hurricane Rita, although the effect was not as devastating.
In a landmark paper published a month before Katrina hit, hurricane specialist Kerry Emmanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stated that an increase in sea temperature was responsible for tropical storms that were 50 per cent stronger and more powerful than those a few decades before. Warmer sea temperatures is one of the theorized consequences of global warming—a phenomenon that occurs when emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases effectively form an “envelope” around the earth, creating a greenhouse effect.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland believes that these hurricanes are a symptom of global warming. “It is a wake-up call for everybody. You have two of the worst hurricanes ever hitting the United States within weeks of each other. There is no doubt the climate is changing.”
The World Summit Outcome document acknowledges the challenge posed by climate change and renews Member States commitment to take action against this threat. Adnan Amin, Director of the UN Environment Programme in New York, told the UN Chronicle: “It’s a very significant political statement, that all Member States signed on to the document and reaffirmed their commitment to the UN Convention on Climate Change and to stabilize greenhouse gas and recognize that mankind is contributing to climate change.” He also said that global warming “is a very serious threat to the future of humanity” and in particular poses a serious threat for small island States. “There’s a potential that these States will be wiped off the face of the earth.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that melting ice caps and glaciers could result in a rise in sea level between 15 and 95 centimetres by the end of the century. For low-lying island States such as Antigua and Barbuda, global warming threatens their existence. John Ashe, that country’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, told the UN Chronicle that he was “deeply concerned” with the predicted rise in sea levels, saying that “in the Pacific, most of the island States tend to be atolls and some are at or below sea level. … Clearly, a number of these countries will be inundated; then we’ll have a situation where the islands that people currently inhabit would become uninhabitable”. Environmental researcher Norman Myers predicted that by the year 2050 up to 150 million people could become “environmental refugees” due to rising sea levels.
For example, the highest point of the island nation of Tuvalu is approximately 4 metres above sea level. The threat of submergence has forced the Government to sign an agreement with New Zealand to relocate many of its citizens in the coming decades. Tuvalu came to international attention in 2002 when they threatened to take Australia and the United States to the International Court of Justice—the World Court—for failing to make a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Tuvaluans felt that this failure threatened their very existence, a breach under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which declares that a population may not be deprived of its means of subsistence. According to a Tuvalu News report, Australia is the world’s biggest per capita emitter and the United States is the single largest polluter of greenhouse gases. — Jane Lloyd |
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