Wed, 09 Dec 2009 5:55p.m.
By Samantha Hayes
Broken sea walls, flooded villages, and no solution to stop it. This is what our neighbours in the Pacific are facing as sea levels rise, but the Government says we have decades to plan for climate change refugees.
The beaches look like the aftermath of a tsunami, but in Kiribati this is normal. Some villages were built on solid land, but now when the tide comes in it regularly floods.
The 33 Kiribati atolls are only 4m above sea level at their highest point, and according to the United Nations development programme could be uninhabitable in as little as 20 years.
"We never wished to be refugees, and we will be refugees if we don't do anything now," says Anote Tong, Kiribati president.
Mr Tong says the victims of climate change will need to be relocated, and the Greens' Jeanette Fitzsimons says New Zealand must step up.
"Kiribati and Tuvalu are already experiencing storm surges that wash right across the island. I don't think we can put off thinking about where those people are going to live for another 20 years."
But Climate Change Minister Nick Smith hopes Copenhagen will provide a different answer.
"The issue of refugees is not a question that the Government had applied its mind to," he says. "That will be an issue for 30-50 years hence if we're unsuccessful at conferences like Copenhagen."
There is no guaranteed figure about how much the sea may rise in the next 100 years, but the widely-agreed prediction is between 50cm and 1.5m.
"There's no doubt at all that New Zealand will be on the preferred destination list for people who lose their homes with sea level rises and floods and storms, particularly in the Pacific island countries," says Ms Fitzsimons.
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