Islands Bear the Brunt of Climate Change

Michael Levine/Civil Beat

MANOA — In the grand scheme of things, Hawaii and other islands throughout the Pacific contribute relatively little to the largely man-made problem of climate change.

But those same islands are being hit hardest, and it's only going to get worse.

For that reason — and also to give residents of Hawaii access to the process without having to travel to the mainland — players from a slew of federal agencies gathered at the University of Hawaii at Manoa's Keoni Auditorium Friday afternoon to discuss the local effects of global warming.

"We bear the worst consequences of global warming and climate change," said Togiola Tulafono, governor of American Samoa.

His country of low-lying islands continues to lose food and land to rising ocean waters and unstable precipitation patterns. Reefs, and the ocean species that rely on them, are dying as the ocean becomes increasingly acidic. And though Samoa has taken steps to try to mitigate global warming — Tulafono uses a Toyota Prius for personal transportation — "Our islands will still be sinking into deeper oceans. ... Our fate is in the hands of others," he says.

Some of those others were in attendance Friday. The meeting of the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force — titled "Island Resiliency in the Face of Climate Change" — is one of just a handful of its kind scheduled across the country, and information gleaned will be used in a report expected in October that was requested last year by President Barack Obama.

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