The Sea Level Rise Foundation was an early partner in the establishment of GLISPA —

The two articles copied below suggest that newest scientific studies may indicate that Sea Level Rise will exceed earlier (IPCC) estimates because apparently more of the total global temperature rise is being sequester in the oceans than previously thought.

Global Warming: Ocean Temperatures Rising ‘Up to 152% Faster than Thought’

• 
  By Lydia Smith
  October 6, 2014 12:11 BST

Inaccurate temperature readings of Southern Hemisphere oceans have led to global warming being underestimated(Getty)

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Scientists may have underestimated the extent of global warming because of inaccurate temperature readings from oceans in the southern hemisphere.

Californian researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology measured temperatures directly from the ocean, as well as using satellite data and climate modelling.

They compared the data to sea-level rises and upper-ocean warming in the northern hemisphere, to map warming trends. The results show the seas have been absorbing more than twice as much of the heat trapped by excess greenhouse gases as previously thought.

The team studied rising temperatures of the southern hemisphere over the decades between 1970 and 2004, and recommended increasing estimates of the rate of ocean warming by between 48% and 152%.

“One could say that global warming is ocean warming”
– Gregory Johnson and John Lyman

Paul Durack, who led the study, said this was the first time scientists have been able to work out how big the gap is between previous estimates and the reality of rising ocean temperatures.

“There has been a general acknowledgement in the literature, that southern-hemisphere estimates of ocean warming are likely biased low,” he said. “Our study is the first to attempt to quantify the magnitude of what this generally acknowledged underestimate is, using as much information as is available.”

Sea temperatures are a fundamental way of measuring global warming, as the ocean stores more than 90% of human-induced excess heat.

Gregory Johnson and John Lyman at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote in a commentary on the research: “One could say that global warming is ocean warming.”

“Quantifying how fast, and where, the ocean is warming is vital to understanding how much and how fast the atmosphere will warm, and seas will rise,” they added.

Higher sea temperatures are also connected to rising sea levels, because water expands as it warms.

Wenju Cai, from the CSIRO in Melbourne, told New Scientist that the findings have a great impact on our understanding of global warming.

“The implication is that the energy imbalance – the net heating of the earth – would have to be bigger,” he said.

Buoys called Argo floats have been collecting ocean data from around 2004, increasing the information available to scientists.

“Prior to 2004, ocean change research was limited by very sparse temperature measurements,” Durack told ABC Science Online.

The research was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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Study: Recent sea level rise is highest in 6,000 years

Doyle Rice, USA TODAY6:10 p.m. EDT October 14, 2014

(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

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Melting glacial ice and ice sheets have driven seas to levels unmatched in the past 6,000 years, says a study out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers studied examples of past sediments in Australia and Asia that dated back 35,000 years and found that overall, the planet’s sea level was fairly stable for most of the past 6,000 years.

Things began to go haywire about 150 years ago, the same time humanity began to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

“There’s something going on today that wasn’t going on before,” said Kurt Lambeck of the Australian National University, who was lead author of the study, in an interview with the Australia Broadcasting Corp. He said the sea level rise is affected by increasing temperatures.

As the Earth’s temperature warms, so do the seas. Heat-trapping greenhouse gases cause more land ice (glaciers and ice sheets) to melt and water to expand.

REPORT: Scientists warn sea levels could swamp coasts

Lambeck told the Guardian that the sea level increase of the past 100 years is “beyond dispute.”

Sea level has risen nearly 8 inches worldwide since 1880, but it doesn’t rise at the same level. In the past century or so, it has climbed about a foot or more in some U.S. cities such as Charleston, Norfolk and Galveston because of the added influence of ocean currents and land subsidence.

Global sea level will rise 1 to 3 feet around the world by the end of this century, according to this year’s Fifth Assessment Report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Contributing: Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

A well-deserved rave endorsement for Chris Trumbauer for Anne Arundel County Council, District 6, by the Annapolis Capital-Gazette, 20 October 2014:

Excerpt:

DISTRICT 6

The candidates in this Annapolis-area district live within a few doors of each other in Bay Ridge. Democrat Chris Trumbauer, a former Riverkeeper who now works on natural resources issues for a public relations firm, is trying for a second term, going up against Republican Dean D’Camera, who runs a business insurance company.

Trumbauer is not just the council’s staunchest environmentalist, but one of its best-informed and most diligent members, attentive to his constituents’ concerns and ready to cross party lines to get legislation passed. He more than deserves another term, and has our endorsement.

– See more at: http://www.capitalgazette.com/opinion/our_say/ph-ac-ce-our-say-1020-20141020,0,7665224.story#sthash.vNQfe4B0.dpuf

from the blog of NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration <http://usresponserestoration.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/pcbs-why-are-banned-chemicals-still-hurting-the-environment-today/>

PCBs: Why Are Banned Chemicals Still Hurting the Environment Today?

February 7, 2014 by Office of Response and Restoration 1 Comment
PCB contamination is high in the Housatonic River and New Bedford Harbor in Massachusetts. How high? The “highest concentrations of PCBs ever documented in a marine environment.” (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

For the United States, the 20th century was an exciting time of innovation in industry and advances in technology. We were manufacturing items such as cars, refrigerators, and televisions, along with the many oils, dyes, and widgets that went with them. Sometimes, however, technology races ahead of responsibility, and human health and the environment can suffer as a result.
This is certainly the case for the toxic compounds known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. From the 1920s until they were banned in 1979, the U.S. produced an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of these industrial chemicals. They were used in a variety of manufacturing processes, particularly for electrical parts, across the country. Wastes containing PCBs were often improperly stored or disposed of or even directly discharged into soils, rivers, wetlands, and the ocean.
Unfortunately, the legacy of PCBs for humans, birds, fish, wildlife, and habitat has been a lasting one. As NOAA’s National Ocean Service notes:

Even with discontinued use, PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are still present in the environment today because they do not breakdown quickly. The amount of time that it takes chemicals such as PCBs to breakdown naturally depends on their size, structure, and chemical composition. It can take years to remove these chemicals from the environment and that is why they are still present decades after they have been banned.

According to a NOAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and State of New York report on the Hudson River, “Fish not only absorb PCBs directly from the river water but are also exposed through the ingestion of contaminated prey, such as insects, crayfish, and smaller fish…New York State’s “eat none” advisory and the restriction on taking fish for this section of the Upper Hudson has been in place for 36 years.” (NOAA)

PCBs are hazardous even at very low levels. When fish and wildlife are exposed to them, this group of highly toxic compounds can travel up the food chain, eventually accumulating in their tissues, becoming a threat to human health if eaten. What happens after animals are exposed to PCBs? According to a NOAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and State of New York report [PDF], PCBs are known to cause:

• Cancer
• Birth defects
• Reproductive dysfunction
• Growth impairment
• Behavioral changes
• Hormonal imbalances
• Damage to the developing brain
• Increased susceptibility to disease

Because of these impacts, NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program (DARRP) works on a number of damage assessment cases to restore the environmental injuries of PCBs. Some notable examples include:

• New York’s Hudson River. Its waters and sediments, as well as the fish, birds, mink, and other wildlife that live in and around the Hudson River have been contaminated by the approximately 30 years of PCB discharges whichcame from two General Electric manufacturing plants on the river.
• Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia River. Over the decades, hazardous waste sites and chemical runoff have polluted this urban river, and PCBs are one of the top contaminants, having built up in the river sediments and also the fish.According to a study that NOAA helped fund, an estimated 17,000 people living near the Anacostia could be eating these polluted fish and are at risk of the resulting health effects.
• The Atlas Tack Superfund Site in Fairhaven, Mass. At one time, this company in a historic coastal town was one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of wire tacks, bottle caps, and other small hardware. But its activities left PCBs along with cyanide, heavy metals, pesticides, and other pollutants in the soils, waters, and surrounding marsh. NOAA, U.S. EPA, Army Corps, and Massachusetts worked together to restore the marshes at Atlas Tack and today continue to observe and monitor this restoration success.
• The St. Lawrence River in Massena, N.Y. After years of manufacturing aluminum and hydraulic fluids at three plants in Massena, N.Y., PCBs from the facilities made their way into the St. Lawrence River, its tributaries the Grasse and Raquette Rivers, and the surrounding area. In 2013, NOAA worked to help secure approximately $20.3 million for projects to restore access to recreational fishing, fish and wildlife, and traditional practices and language for the nearby St. Regis Mohawk Tribe.

Yet the list could go on—fish and birds off the southern California coast, fish and waterfowl in Wisconsin’s Sheboygan River, a harbor in Massachusetts with the “highest concentrations of PCBs ever documented in a marine environment.”
These and other chemical pollutants remain a challenge but also a lesson for taking care of the resources we have now. While PCBs will continue to be a threat to human and environmental health, NOAA and our partners are working hard to restore the damage done and protect people and nature from future impacts.

An article from Islands Business (of Port Moresby, PNG) forwarded by Franklin McDonald <franklin.jmcd> — couldn’t say it better myself . . . .

http://www.islandsbusiness.com/news/usa/6083/why-island-wisdom-is-crucial-to-help-adapt-and-pre/

Why Island Wisdom Is Crucial to Help Adapt and Prepare for the Impacts of Climate Change

By Han Seung-soo
From HUFFINGTON POST/PACNEWS

News
Wed 27 Aug 2014

TopicsUSAShare this articleEmailFacebookTwitter
NEW YORK, USA —-For decades, small island countries have been warning the world about the consequences of climate change. While many countries have been debating whether climate change is even happening or who is to blame, small islands have just had to deal with its impact, from extreme weather to rising sea levels and increasing environmental vulnerability.

Major storms have always been a fact of life for small islands. But in recent years they have intensified in their destructive capabilities. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan struck the Caribbean island of Grenada, causing widespread destruction. The financial cost of the disaster was estimated at more than $900 million – more than twice the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Only 10 months later, the country was hit again, this time by Hurricane Emily, which caused another $50 million in damage.

In the Caribbean, changes in hurricane intensity and frequency could eventually result in additional annual losses of $450 million, largely due to disruption of a key source of revenue and jobs: tourism. Limited diversification and small market size means that small island economies are not resilient to disaster loss. This is true not just in the Caribbean, but the world over.

According to global risk models developed by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), six of the top 10 countries with the greatest proportion of resources at risk during hurricanes or cyclones are small islands. These losses will only increase due to sea-level rise, water scarcity, drought, and other factors.

The 38 small island developing states, which spread across the Caribbean, the Pacific and Indian Oceans, are not sitting and waiting for the next storm to hit. They have been taking measures to adapt to and manage the risks posed by climate change.

Several Caribbean islands came together seven years ago to create an insurance pool of easy-to-access disaster funding. Spreading the risk across countries reduces premiums and provides contributors with a safety net which can fund vital services when disaster strikes. Since 2007, more than $30 million has been paid out by the 16 participating countries. A similar initiative is under way in the Pacific region where the memories of the massive human toll and devastation due to Typhoon Haiyan that claimed more than 6,000 lives in the Philippines last November are still all too vivid.

Ideas and actions for reducing the risk from disasters will be at the forefront of the United Nations Conference on Small Island Developing States, to be held in Samoa from 1-4 September. The Conference will be a showcase for those living on the frontlines of climate change and could have a lasting and positive influence on the post-2015 development agenda.

The Conference is an acknowledgement by all the countries of the world of the unique circumstances that small island developing countries face. Their size, combined with their remoteness, and economies of scale, have made it that much more difficult for small islands to implement measures to become resilient. This is compounded by the impacts of climate change, a problem that is hardly of their own making as they collectively contribute less than 1 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, many are striving to become carbon neutral by using renewable energy, improving energy efficiency, and offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions.

Next week’s conference in Samoa is the first of two critical global gatherings. Just a few weeks later, on 23 September in New York, UN Secretary-General will host heads of State, CEOs and civil society leaders at the Climate Summit. The Summit aims to spur accelerated and ambitious actions to reduce emissions and build resilience to climate change worldwide, from the largest countries to the smallest island States. It’s about turning promises into performance.

With international attention on small islands, climate change and the post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction, there has never been a better chance to turn the tide. Now is the time to listen, support and partner with those who have seen first-hand what climate change can do to your economy and your community. It would be one of the greatest tragedies of our time to continue to ignore the warnings from small islands; their issues will soon become our own.

I bring this to your attention only because right wing, anti-environmental movements that start in the US often infect the rest of the world. Also, in the Caribbean, some fisheries limits might be affected by this new interpretation — if we have a bunch of fish in a big aquarium somewhere, can we fish out the rest?

I wish the title wasn’t so obscure. . .

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS
Conservation, or Curation?
By JOHN A. VUCETICH and MICHAEL PAUL NELSONAUG. 20, 2014

Credit
Victo Ngai
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story

THE United States Fish and Wildlife Service — the main agency for the conservation of species — recently announced a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that severely limits its reach and retreats from the conservation ethic that healthy landscapes depend on native plants and animals.

The law says that a species qualifies for protection if it is in danger of extinction “throughout all or a significant portion of its range.” A species does not need to be at risk of extinction everywhere it lives if it is endangered in a significant portion of its range. But what is “significant”? And how is “range” defined?

Now, under a policy that took effect July 31, the agency has provided answers. The law’s protections, for practical purposes, will be applied only if a species is at risk of extinction in a vital (read, significant) portion of its range where its loss would put the entire species at risk of extinction. And the concept of range no longer takes into account its historical distribution but defines the concept in terms of where the species is found now.
This means that as long as a small, geographically isolated population remains viable, it won’t matter if the animal or plant in question has disappeared across the vast swath of its former habitat. It won’t qualify for protection.

This interpretation threatens to reduce the Endangered Species Act to a mechanism that merely preserves representatives of a species, like curating rare pieces in a museum. Also likely to suffer are efforts to protect or repopulate areas where endangered species once lived.

Imagine if this new approach had been in place when the bald eagle was being considered for protection in the 1970s. Arguably, the national bird might never have been listed as endangered in most of the lower 48 states, even though it had virtually been extirpated by illegal hunting and the pesticide DDT. Why? Because a healthy population of bald eagles remained in Alaska and Canada.

Today, the return of the bald eagle is one of the great successes of the Endangered Species Act. The bird is flourishing in the very areas where it had been wiped out and reasserting its position in the ecological order that was disrupted by its absence. This was accomplished in part by using the authority in the law to protect nesting sites and summer and winter roost sites and to reintroduce the bird into its historical range.

(The Fish and Wildlife Service says it still would have protected the bald eagle under this new interpretation. Nevertheless, a case could have been made to withhold the law’s safeguards once the bird was no longer at risk of extinction outright.)

More recently, other threatened animals haven’t been so lucky.

In cases involving the gray wolf, wolverine and swift fox, the agency, employing the logic of this new policy to guide it, decided or proposed to remove or withhold protections for those animals after concluding there was no risk that they would go extinct. Never mind that they had vanished from much of the territory they once inhabited. (The gray wolf, which is in the administrative process of losing its protection under the law, had been lost from 85 percent of its range but securely inhabits the last 15 percent.) The agency reasoned that there were enough of these animals left in their much-diminished range to survive.
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story

Several years ago, the Fish and Wildlife Service and a sister agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, began developing a uniform policy for interpreting that key phrase in the Endangered Species Act — the line that says that a species must be at risk “throughout all or a significant portion of its range” to qualify for protection. Uncertainty over the meaning of that phrase and government decisions based on varying interpretations had led to controversy and litigation.

The two agencies call their reading of the law a “reasonable interpretation,” although they acknowledge that “there is no single best interpretation.” In fact, their reading is especially narrow and possibly contrary to Congress’s intent when it passed one of the nation’s most important conservation laws. A more appropriate interpretation of range would be those portions of a species’ historical distribution that are suitable, or that can feasibly be made suitable, by mitigating or removing the threats that had caused the species’ decline.
If the purpose of conservation is merely to preserve the fewest possible members of a species, then this new policy might be adequate. But this approach amounts to a retreat from two conservation aspirations that had long animated the law: first, to mitigate harms that humans had perpetrated against certain species, such as severely reducing their geographic range; and second, to make it possible for species to return to landscapes where they had been extirpated. The idea was that healthy ecosystems depend on the presence of native species.

Since taking effect in 1973, the law has been instrumental in saving many species from extinction, including the California condor, American crocodile, whooping crane and black-footed ferret. Some 1,400 plants, animals and fish are now on the list.

This new approach does not mean that endangered species won’t still be saved. But it falls far short of the conservation aspirations the law once embodied. This new policy will result in a world for our children even more diminished than the one we live in.
John A. Vucetich is an ecologist at Michigan Technological University. Michael Paul Nelson is an environmental ethicist at Oregon State University.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 21, 2014, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Conservation, or Curation?. Order Reprints|Today’s Paper|Subscribe

From those wonderful guys (see mention of Goldman Sachs key role toward bottom of article below), who brought us “Super Recession 2007,” Social Impact Bonds. . . or SIBs, if you prefer. (Twitter version might be: “From the WS SOBs, SIBs.”)

The report is by the Non-Profit Quarterly at <https://nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/24658-democracy-in-tatters-citizen-impotence-in-american-democracy.html> [My emphasis added to the account below.]

POLICY/SOCIAL CONTEXT

First Social Impact Bond Fails to Meet Halfway Mark Performance Target

WRITTEN BY RICK COHEN CREATED ON WEDNESDAY, 13 AUGUST 2014 14:47

August 8, 2014;National Union of Public and General Employees

The first Social Impact Bond project in the world, the Peterborough prison effort to reduce recidivism by 10 percent, has encountered a problem: It didn’t meet the 10 percent target for the first cohort of released prisoners and therefore failed to qualify for an early payout for investors. In fact, according to this report from the National Union of Public and General Employees, “the data released this week shows the scheme will come nowhere near achieving what proponents claimed it would when the project was launched.” (“Nowhere near,” it appears, actually was a mere 8.4 percent reduction in recidivism.)

This was an early payout possibility for the investors in the SIB, and they missed it, but investors have the ability to get some payout by the end of the project. While the payout for the first cohort would have been triggered by a 10 percent reduction in recidivism, the payout target for the combined first and second cohorts of released prisoners is only a 7.5 percent recidivism reduction (compared to a national comparison group with characteristics similar to the Peterborough prison short-sentence population). The sponsors of the Peterborough bond apparently quickly emailed a statement that the project was “on track” to meet its targets for a payout to investors by 2016 for the first and second cohorts.

Third Sector’s Stephen Cook notes that the third cohort of the Peterborough SIB was cancelled by the government, as the program is being transformed into a national program under the Ministry of Justice called Transforming Rehabilitation. The new national program is still measurement- and results-oriented like the Peterborough SIB, but as a national program, it will be restructured to be roughly equivalent to what American nonprofits experience as performance-based contracting; participating nonprofits implementing the anti-recidivism projects will be compensated when they reach predetermined performance benchmarks. The process is sort of like a SIB but, as Cook notes, but “without any social investors,” or as we would note, without any private investors anticipating a profit from the program.

Like the reaction of SIB promoters to the news that the third Peterborough cohort had been cancelled, the SIB community is publicly talking up SIBs despite the project’s falling short at its first payment point. But Cook senses something else coming from the SIB promoters’ bleachers. “The overall impression is that everyone concerned is determined to talk up the Peterborough SIB in public, despite qualified success and difficulties over statistics and measurement,” he writes. “In private, some of those involved are much more downbeat about the prospects for replicating what might prove to be a one-off experiment.”

For some observers, the problem posed by SIBs like the Peterborough project is more than the likelihood that they might be simply rather expensive one-time experiments. The fact that the UK government was able to turn the project into a program—minus having to pay a premium to private investors—goes to a point that critics have raised before. If a governmental agency and related nonprofits are going to go through what was needed to structure the Peterborough project, which the National Union of Public and General Employees says took 29 months, including 11 months just negotiating the measures by which success would be determined and the investors paid, why not work on a more broad-based program? That’s time that might be better spent on public policy lobbying to create a more widely available program rather than designing the arcane structure of a SIB for the benefit of private investors tied to one project.

Cook suggests that the biggest question about SIBs might be “whether they will ever fulfill the initial intention of attracting a wide range of investors—not just forward-thinking foundations willing to take risks for the sake of innovation.” In the Peterborough case, 17 charitable foundations invested the £5m to work with the Peterborough prisoners. Charitable foundations can obviously accept little or no financial return on their investments in social programs; they do that through a concept called “grants.” Private investors want a return on their investment—called “profit.”

In New York, the anti-recidivism SIB that has Goldman Sachs as its primary investor is structured to give Goldman a return of more than 20 percent if performance targets are met, and even that wasn’t enough for Goldman. The massive Wall Street firm’s SIB is also the beneficiary of a 75 percent guarantee from Bloomberg Philanthropies. According to the National Union article, the response of the SIB community to the Peterborough outcomes is not one of “acknowledging the flaws in the privatization schemes…[but instead] proposing [that] governments provide incentives or guarantees to encourage people to invest in” SIBs, that is, finding ways to further subsidize SIBs.

Therein lies the real problem. How much are SIBs aimed at solving social problems versus finding new opportunities for private investors to profit from the largesse of taxpayers?—Rick Cohen

Terms:Government Nonprofit Relations, Newswire

Now I’m not saying that conservation trusts have a lot in common with Social Impact Bonds, but I sure wish someone would show us the hard data

[In my experience in the Caribbean, the problems of LACK of COOPERATION do NOT come from independent SIDS failing to cooperate, but rather from TERRITORIES of major nations who do not share available information. The best example was Hurricane Marilyn in 1995, which hit St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands with inadequate advance warning of changes in the storm track, EVEN THOUGH those changes were charted by radar used by the Met Offices in the French West Indies.]

from <http://www.sprep.org/climate-change/global-campaign-launched-to-improve-weather-and-climate-services-for-small-island-developing-states-sids>

Global campaign launched to improve weather and climate services for small island developing states (SIDS)

Details Published on 04 August 2014

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A global campaign to improve weather and climate services for all small island developing states was launched today with the support of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and Digicel Pacific.

The Small Islands, Weather Together campaign (www.weathertogether.org) aims to show how the small island developing states of the world can work together to improve their vital weather and climate services.

In the Pacific region alone, extreme weather already accounts for 76% of all disasters with 50% directly related to cyclones. The increase in extreme weather events is also hampering the sustainable development of many small island developing states. For example, when Cyclone Evan hit Samoa in December 2012 it resulted in the loss of one third of the country’s entire annual economic output.

WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud stresses that small island developing states need greater investment to further strengthen their vital weather and climate services and to ensure that efforts towards sustainable development are not wasted.

“If we don’t invest in stronger weather and climate services for small island developing states then extreme weather events could simply wipe out years of development effort if they are not well prepared. It is much more cost-effective to invest in early preparedness and prevention than to focus only on rehabilitation and post-disaster action,” he asserted.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of weather and climate events – cyclones, typhoons, drought, flash floods – in many small island developing states. But many of their Meteorological Services still lack the basic infrastructure, technology and expertise they need to protect vulnerable island communities and economies.

For Mr. Jarraud, there is an urgent need to enhance the quality of early warnings for extreme weather. He pointed out that the formulation and dissemination of these warnings also need to be improved so that they can be understood and used by the island communities and government agencies.

In the Pacific islands, SPREP and other partners are working to improve communication of this type of information in partnership with national meteorological services, the media, including broadcast stations and communities.

“SPREP recognises that weather forecasts and warnings such as those given during tropical cyclones do not have a shelf life, they must be disseminated rapidly to the public or else they are useless,” says SPREP Acting Director General Kosi Latu.

He further noted, “We can improve the quality of the forecasts and warnings so that countries and communities have more lead time to take action. But we can also improve the way climate information is used over longer time scales by farmers, fishermen and by decision-makers across government. For example, when planning new infrastructure, we can say ‘this place has a high risk of tsunami, flooding or storm surge, so don’t build things here’.”

Mr. Jarraud recalls that the small developing island states stand to suffer more and more if the global community fails to agree to a limit in greenhouse gas emissions, the main human cause of climate change and global warming.

“Greenhouse gas emissions are still on the rise. We need to reach a peak of emission over the next 15–20 years, then to decrease dramatically to zero equivalent emission in about 50–60 years from now.

“This is a huge challenge. We must act now. The more we wait, the more difficult it will be, and, therefore, the more expensive it will be for countries to adapt to climate change. If we do not act now, we are agreeing to leave the small island developing states in a situation which may no longer be manageable,” he warned.

The Small Islands, Weather Together campaign was launched specifically to coincide with the lead up to the United Nations Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States, which will be held in Apia, Samoa, from 1–4 September, 2014.

For more information visit: callingstevemenzies