Micronesia is a vast island nation with an ancient culture that includes 607 islands, scattered across a million square miles of the western Pacific. A rise of even one meter (three feet) would render most of these islands uninhabitable. More from the OP:
A U.N. Study on Thursday said changes in Pacific winds and currents meant sea levels in the region had risen faster than the world average since the 1990s.
He said that many of the 170 nations meeting in Bonn were slowly understanding the extent of threats faced by island states. Rising tides wash salt water onto the land, often ruining vegetation and crops such as breadfruit and coconuts.
"We think they are (getting the message) but not quickly enough to climate-poof some of our more vulnerable communities," de Brum said. Measures include raising homes on stilts, rebuilding roads and docks, and even abandoning some atolls.
Even the dead are no longer safe in my country," Micronesia's Ambassador to the UN told ABC News at his mission's offices on a rainy day in New York. He gave us recent digital photos of his home islands. In one, a man stands shin-deep out in a calm and sunny sea ... where a cemetery used to be. In others, colorful traditional burial grounds spill out of a wave-eroded bank onto the tiny remaining beach, and water surges inland past tumbled houses.
And excerpts from a 2009 report:
A rising water table is already turning salty in the center of islands, killing staple food crops like taro, and many other kinds of plants. "Sea level rise is the most scary -- you cannot put sea walls on all the islands -- about 600 of them. 500 are small islands like atoll islands," said Nakayama.
The World Has 'Written Us Off'
Micronesia's culture is ancient. Its people, say historians, arrived about 3,500 years ago.
"It's going to be very sad for us to lose all that ancestry and homes -- where we've grown and maintain our culture," Nakayama said.
"Where will you go?" we asked. "We don't want to go anywhere," he answered. "We want to stay on our islands, and this is what we want the international community to understand.
"I feel they have written us off because the kind of targets they are putting on the table is not going to save the islands," said the ambassador.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/global-warming-micronesia-island-nations-threatened-sea-level/story?id=9280340
= new reply since forum marked as read