People drowning from global warming cry out

BALI: "Rising higher and higher are the waters of death," sing residents of the Pacific islands who are losing their homes and livelihoods due to global warming. "Who will take our people?" they chant.

Over 10,000 delegates from 187 countries have gathered on the seaside here for the UN conference on climate change Dec 3-14. They are discussing technical issues and funding mechanisms to address climate change. They are feuding on the degree of responsibility for global warming. They are arguing over what temperature rise would be "acceptable".

But all this pales into insignificance before the cry of people from Tonga, Kiribati, Bougainville and Torres Islands. As they showed through photographs, songs and traditional dances, they are at the frontline of those already affected as the sea level rises around the world due to global warming.

Wearing nylon skirts made to look like traditional grass skirts, three dancers from Kiribati showed how their way of life is being affected.

"Now it is harder to fish, the trees are falling down as the sea comes closer and the coastline is eroded," they sang. "Now there are more storms, stronger storms. When will the rainy season come? We don't know any more."

Kiribati consists of 32 low-lying atolls, none more than 300 metres long. Showing photographs of how the sea was getting into these precious bits of land, one of the residents asked: "Where do we go?"

Ursula Rakova has come here from the Carterets Islands in Bougainville. "We used to have six atolls," she says. "Now we have seven, as the sea has cut one atoll into two."

As she sings and dances, Rakova shows photographs of how water from the rising sea is bubbling through her taro patch. "What do I eat?" she asks.

These islands are barely two metres above the sea level anyway. Rakova is resigned to the fact that she and her 3,000-odd people in Carterets will have to move to the main island Bougainville.

"Will they accept us? Even if they do, we will lose our cultural identity. We don't want that to happen. But we don't have a choice."

A resident of the Torres Islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea shows photographs of how the sea had already reached her front door, quite literally. There is a swamp behind her house.

"Where do I go?" she wails. "The sea is getting into the swamp as well. When I was a child, the swamp used to be full of water lilies. They don't grow any more, the water has become too saline for them."

These are the people who don't want to wait while the rest of the world goes through protracted negotiations on ways to address climate change and experts predict that humanity can live with a two-degree rise in temperature.

As the coastline erodes and the first row of coconut palms falls down in island after island, the people of the Pacific say: "Two degrees is too much too late. We want a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and we want it now. Save us. Save our people."