Why Small Island Nations Won't Bargain With Their Survival

Jess Leber is Change.org's environment editor and is writing from COP-16 in Cancun this week, where 193 nations are meeting from Nov. 29-Dec. 11 in their yearly attempt to forge a new international treaty to tackle the global warming crisis.

CANCUN, Mexico—To listen to Antonio Lima speak is to understand why climate change is not only the environmental outrage of our time, but also the moral one as well.

Lima—an ambassador of Cape Verde, a group of West African islands—was among the delegates here at the Cancun climate negotiations today representing the interests of the "Alliance of Small Island States," a coalition of 43 nations fighting for their lives against a tide of rising seas.

“We are facing the end of history," Lima says. "We don't want to be the sacrificed countries of the 21st century. We want to survive," he implored yesterday.

His block of countries, known for short as AOSIS, has little power on the world stage. But when it comes to influence, what these countries lack in Gross Domestic Product or mineral resources, they make up for in the existential urgency of their plight. While they did almost nothing to contribute to rising global greenhouse gas emissions, if world powers cannot very soon agree to a concrete plan to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, these countries may very literally cease to exist anyway.

Unfortunately, many say that the AOSIS goal of 1.5 degrees is already a pipe dream—both politically and logistically. The train wreck that is the global climate system is not going to be derailed any time soon, and even last year's loose agreement by bigger emitters (the U.S., China, et al.) to limit warming to a more catastrophic 2 degrees hasn't been backed up by reality.

Still, the small island countries joined by most African nations say they will draw a line in the sand this December in Cancun: 1.5 degrees or bust. It may not be realistic, but asking them to compromise to anything less ambitious, Lima says, is like asking them to compromise their own survival. "The difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees is the difference between survival and collapse."

AOSIS will consider the Cancun talks over the next two weeks a success in part if nations agree to set a hard and fast 2011 deadline to come to a concrete agreement, one that ideally puts the world on a 1.5 degree track. To make this happen, Lima, and all of the other island nation delegates are in negotiating rooms talking to the U.S., E.U., China and India, etc., with only the power of their voice and their willingness to lead by example (many AOSIS countries are moving to renewable energy big time, and they say they will make an announcement in Cancun about a major investment towards that goal).

Lima tacitly recognizes it is a tough challenge. But, in making his case, he brought up what he called an unusual word in the U.N.'s exceedingly bureaucratic negotiating process: "solidarity." He said other nations should feel uncomfortable condemning small island nations to a crumbling economy, landscape and livelihood.

After all, he says: "We don't have mountains to climb up. There are just coral reefs."

Photo credit: PhillipC via Flickr

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