1

http://www.climatemediapartnership.org/reporting/stories/tuvalu-demands-cuts-to-maintain-its-existence/

 

Tuvalu demands cuts to maintain its existence 

By: Paula Scheidt Manoel on December 18th, 2009 

When I ask Fiu Mata’esse Elisara’Laulu how his country, Samoa, would suffer 
with climate change, the answer comes rapidly: “Do you have the whole day 
for us to talk about it? 

Elisara’Laulu a representative of people from Pacific Ocean countries, or the 
‘liquid continent’ as he calls it, are at high risk of being hit by climate change. 

These countries do not have big delegation offices at the UN Climate Change 
Conference. In comparison the United States has three large rooms. But this 
doesn’t make such a difference when it comes to negotiations. Being rich and big 
or small and poor, every country that is a party under the Climate Change 
Convention has the power of veto. And it takes just one ‘no’ to stop the climate 
game. 

With the latest climate change predictions, Samoans now worry about their own 
existence. The increase in the number of cyclones and sea level rise are the 
main treats to these countries. Elisara’Laulu said that studies by the National 
Institute of Atmospheric and Water Research of New Zealand shows that the 
Pacific is hit by around nine cyclones annually. “You just need one cyclone to 
devastate your economy”, says Elisara’Laulu, director of the first NGO of Samoa, 
Ole Siosiomaga Society (OLSSI). 

According to him, 76% of the Samoan population lives on the coast and most of 
the infrastructure is near the sea. “Until 1990, the frequency of cyclones was one 
to every 100 years. In 1991 we were hit by one and then another the following 
year.” 

Protests on Wednesday 9 December came from just one small island country in 
the Pacific – Tuvalu. The corridors were packed with supporters asking for more 
ambitious emissions cuts.  Inside the talks the Tuvaluan delegation was asking 
for sufficient reductions to guarantee that maximum greenhouse 
gas concentrations in the atmosphere do not exceed 350 parts per million (ppm). 
This would keep the temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Many 
other countries aim only to keep temperature rises below 2 degrees.  

Such an ambitious target would require cuts not just from rich countries, but 
developing ones too. But, nations as China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and India 
were against the proposal. 

 

2

The result of it was the suspension of the negotiations, in the words of the 
executive-secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate 
Change, Yvo de Boer, talks “were suspended to lunch”