The world must step back from the brink of climate disaster to save the people of the Pacific from obliteration, the prime minister of Samoa has urged.
On the eve of a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is expected to deliver a scientific “final warning” on the climate emergency, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, Samoa’s prime minister, issued a desperate plea for action.
“We’re all impacted, but the degree of the impact is in the particular circumstance of countries. So our low-lying atoll countries, it’s right there, we’re living with it,” said Mata’afa.
“There are already examples in the Pacific of communities, whole communities, that have relocated to different countries,” she said. “They’re really having to address issues of sovereignty through loss of land.”
Mata’afa warned that all countries would face escalating damage unless they acted now. “This is a collective issue, no one is free from the impacts of climate change,” she said, in an interview with the Guardian. “So it’s very important for the global family to hold to determinations [to cut greenhouse gas emissions] that have already been made. It seems more immediate for us [in the Pacific] but it’s still impacting all of us.”