Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Pacific small island states are concerned that, despite the creation of the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing (AGF), climate aid will not be delivered in a timely fashion. "The Pacific SIDS [Small Island Developing States] bear almost no responsibility for the onset of climate change, yet we are suffering the consequences today... Climate change is a man-made disaster and redress for the damage being done to our islands is long overdue," said Ambassador Marlene Moses of Nauru.

The role of the AGF is to design innovative ways of mobilizing new and additional financial resources from private and public sources following commitments made at the Copenhagen climate summit. While the AGF co-chair Jens Stoltenberg, prime minister of Norway, reported that discussions have shown that there are many, possible sources of finance, he acknowledged that political viability remains an issue. Ambassador Stuart Beck of Palau considers it unlikely the private sector would be responsive. "We're not really sanguine about the delivery here," he said. "They're nice words, but when you get on the ground it's difficult to build business models that make a whole lot of sense."

A fifth of the world's mangroves have been lost since 1950, according to the World Mangrove Atlas published by the United Nations Environment Programme and The Nature Conservancy. Mangrove forests are being destroyed up to four times faster than other forests, with the current rate of loss standing at 0.7 per cent a year. Mangroves provide a range of services to humanity, including storm protection, nurseries for fish, carbon storage and wood supply.

The report concludes that the destruction of mangroves is prompted by local decisions, market forces, industrial demand, population expansion or poverty. Coastal development and shrimp farming are often responsible. High-level policy decisions can also play an important part. In the Philippines, state-wide encouragement of aquaculture has led to massive losses whereas in Malaysia state ownership of mangroves has ensured that large areas remain in forest reserves, managed for timber and charcoal production. "Given their value, there can be no justification for further mangrove loss," said Emmanuel Ze Meka, head of the International Tropical Timber Organization. "What's urgently needed is for all those working in fields of forestry, fisheries and the environment to work together and communicate their worth, both to the public and to those with the capacity to make a difference."

Across the Indian Ocean, the rate of sea-level rise is particularly high along the coasts of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Java, according to a new study by scientists at the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the United States. However, "global sea-level patterns are not geographically uniform," reports Gerald Meehl from NCAR, and sea levels are falling in some areas, such as the Seychelles Islands. The study suggests that the pattern of sea-level rise in the Indian Ocean is linked to changes in the oceanic and atmospheric circulations, which may have been induced by anthropogenic climate change.

Temperatures across the tropical ocean from the east coast of Africa to the International Date Line in the Pacific, termed the India-Pacific warm pool, have risen by 0.5°C over the past 50 years. Weiqing Han of the University of Colorado warns that "if future anthropogenic warming effects in the Indo-Pacific warm pool dominate natural variability, mid-ocean islands such as the Mascarenhas Archipelago, coasts of Indonesia, Sumatra, and the north Indian Ocean may experience significantly more sea level rise than the global average."