Oceania > Samoa > Climate change challenges

Samoa: Climate change challenges

2013/07/01

As part of the Economic Commission for Africa’s (ECA's) contribution to the forthcoming third International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS), the African Centre for Climate Change Policy (ACPC) is preparing a study that takes a comprehensive look at climate and development challenges in SIDS.

According to a statement from the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia-based ECA, the SIDS conference will hold in Apia, Samoa, in 2014 to focus the world’s attention on a group of nations that remain a appropriate case for sustainable development, in view of their incomparable and particular vulnerabilities.

Ahead of that conference, in Africa, national and regional preparatory meetings are underway for the 2014 conference.

One of such meetings is due to hold 17-19 July in the Seychelles as part of the Atlantic, Indian Island Ocean and South China Sea (AIMS) region.

The study will make use of some key human development and wealth profile indices, rather than focus only on a trail of natural catastrophes that most SIDS are subjected to.

Rather than point exclusively to the perennial vulnerability differential that most SIDs have to contend with, the study under preparation speaks on the incomparable opportunities that can be harnessed in key sectors such as ecotourism, agriculture and fisheries.

It as well attempts to analyse strategies that will translate current vulnerabilities into concrete opportunities, in ways that will lead to structural and institutional transformation.

ACPC said this study marks a significant departure from the current SIDs literature in analysing the urgency for an “institutional renewal”.

The process will present policy and economic windows that will allow SIDs to graduate out of a Least Developed Nations (LDCs) status.

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the climate change narrative that the nations that suffer the majority from natural disasters and extreme events are those that contributed the least to the problem.

'It is reported that out of the 25 nations that are subjected to the harsh vagaries of climate change impacts, 13 are from the small island developing states,” ECA's Executive Secretary, Mr, Carlos Lopes, said in the statement.

He said the distribution of climate change impacts is not even and that small island developing nations are exposed to multiple vulnerabilities beyond their immediate challenge of insularity, remoteness and a geographical location that is often conducive to natural disasters.

SIDs in Africa tend to have distinctive geographic, social, demographic and economic characteristics which affect their development strategies and prospects in significant ways.

Vulnerabilities related to climate change can further result in loss of lives, and damage to property and infrastructure that can easily cripple their small economies.

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