Asia Pacific Clean Energy / Islands & Isolated Communities Congress

The 2013 Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Expo will be held jointly with the 2013 Islands & Isolated Communities Congress at the Hawai‘i Convention Center starting tomorrow September 9th, and through September 11.

The event is the preeminent meeting place for international leaders and energy experts at the forefront of the clean energy movement. Securing energy independence and developing a clean energy industry that promotes the vitality of our planet are two reasons why it is critical to reaffirm already established partnerships and build new ones throughout the Asia-Pacific region and the world. The Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Expo and the Islands & Isolated Communities Congress provide a forum for the high-level global networking necessary to advance this emerging clean energy culture.

Islands and Isolated Communities are the planet’s vanguard societies facing imported energy dependencies, constrained resources, and vulnerability to climate change. Join global leaders developing solutions and projects; from island nations worldwide, to land-locked greening cities, to isolated military installations.

The sustainability and resiliency of island communities depends on best practices developed in energy, water, agriculture, security, resource and disaster risk management and societal actions. As island communities are facing these complex and interdependent challenges across the planet, the Islands and Isolated Communities Congress is focused on building a global movement to champion these solutions. The solutions developed on islands will lay the foundation for best practices world-wide.

Auyuittuq - The Land that Never Melts is Melting

Many Strong Voices (MSV) will be represented here by Nick Robson, D-G of the Cayman Institute who sits on MSV's Advisory Committee.

The goal of Many Strong Voices is to promote the well-being, security, and sustainability of coastal communities in the Arctic and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) by bringing these regions together to take action on climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to tell their stories to the world.

Coastal Erosion - Seychelles

The Arctic and SIDS are barometers of global environmental change. As they are on the frontlines of climate change, they are also critical testing grounds for the ideas and programmes that will strengthen the adaptive capacities of human societies confronting climate change.

Lessons learned through MSV support policy development at local, regional, and international levels. They provide decision-makers in the two regions with the knowledge to safeguard and strengthen vulnerable social, economic, and natural systems. More

 

The good news this week is that a new Pacific regional pact, the Majuro Declaration, calling for aggressive action to combat climate change has achieved a “major accomplishment” by gaining U.S. support, officials said Sunday.

The Majuro Declaration, endorsed by the 15-nation Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) at their summit last week, contains specific pledges on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Majuro, Marshall Islands

The PIF nations, some of which are barely a meter above sea level and risk being swamped by rising waters, have since received wide support led by the United States after presenting the document to more than two dozen countries at a post-forum dialogue.

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced during the session a new climate change fund for Pacific islands vulnerable to rising sea levels.

“Climate change is the defining challenge of our time,” she said in launching the Pacific-American fund.

Separately, the U.S. was offering US$24 million over five years for projects in “vulnerable coastal communities” in the Pacific, she said. More

 

Islands struggle to convince UN Security Council that climate change is a security threat

The Marshall Islands and other low-lying island nations appealed to the U.N. Security Council on Friday to recognize climate change as an international security threat that jeopardizes their very survival.

Tony deBrum, a minister and assistant to the Marshall Islands president, said the island nations are facing opposition from Security Council permanent members Russia and China and a group of more than 130 mainly developing nations, which argue that the U.N.'s most powerful body is the wrong place to address climate change.

DeBrum told reporters after a closed Security Council meeting on the "Security Dimensions of Climate Change," organized by Britain and Pakistan, that he hopes more council members will be convinced that "this is a security issue and not just an economic-political-social issue."

The low-lying islands, which are already being inundated with sea water, want the council to bring its "political weight" to the issue and help their countries survive, for example, by harnessing new technologies and ensuring alternative energy supplies, he said.

DeBrum said it was "ironic, bizarre perhaps" that 35 years after he went before the Security Council to seek the independence of the Marshall Islands he was back again "to appeal for the survival of my country."

He said climate change has already taken a toll on the Marshall Islands. Wells have filled with salt water, making drinking water scarce and in turn affecting food production. One small island in a lagoon is now under water, and coastlines are being eroded.

The impact of climate change is also causing migration to other islands, as well as to Australia and the United States, he said.

In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Rachel Kyte, the World Bank's vice-president for sustainable development, said that since the council's last discussion of climate change "the sense of immediacy and urgency has increased."

"The question is: Do you want to keep on cataloguing all of the terrible things that are going to happen if we continue on a business as usual track, or are we actually going to start doing anything about it?" she said

Kyte said she explained to the council on Friday that "it is possible to stop the worst from happening but it will require real, concerted policy action globally at every country level." More

 

 

A King Tide Near You: A Preview of Sea Level Rise

A recent article in SF Gate, entitled "Preparing the bay for rising sea levels," reminded me of what I sometimes take for granted.

King tide - Tuvalu

As a spokesperson for drowning islands -- the low-lying coral atoll island countries which face imminent sea level rise inundation -- I have talked with many an islander about the King tide season. If you have never heard of the King tide before, it's a predictable high tide, occurring when the orbit and alignment of the Earth, sun, and moon coincide. They happen a few times each year, from December to February, and they provide a preview of what's to come in coastal shorelines and coastal communities. What now occurs just a few times a year during the King tide, where low-lying areas are flooded beyond recognition, will someday be the year-round reality. On low lying islands in the Pacific, the King tide exaggerates these issues and gives islanders a dreaded sneak peek of what's around the corner. But the King tides don't only happen in the small island countries. There are King tides nearly everywhere the Pacific Ocean touches, including just a mile from my home in Oakland, Calif. For those that pay attention (and depending on your proximity to the water, some people can't help but notice), the King tide provides a window into the future of what sea level rise will do. It also provides us with a better opportunity to visualize and understand what it is like for islanders who live vulnerably close to the rising sea.

The aforementioned article showcases the flood-mitigation conceptual design of architects Elizabeth Ranieri and Byron Kuth. The Bay Area architects entered their ventilated levee design into the International Rising Tides competition in 2008, and were one of the six winners. A system of pump ventilators, called "Folding Water," "would be built into the walls, returning excess water to the sea while mimicking the effects of tidal exchange. Natural pressure would force ocean waters and small sea life into the estuary through one side of these tubes, while the mixed water would be pumped back out the other side." The technology is conceptual at this stage, and could very well remain that way. Not only would it be incredibly costly to implement, but like most other mitigation measures, it would be a controversial addition to the landscape.

Controversial or not, the reality is that the water is rising in the San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco has the oldest continually operating tidal gauge in the Americas, which has recorded the varying sea levels since 1854. Over the past 100 years, it has tracked an 8-inch rise in water level. It will continue rising, scientists say, and could rise by 1.5 feet by 2050. The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission has warned that large tracts of land near the bay could regularly flood, threatening airports and other infrastructure, offices and government buildings, and the homes of 100,000 individuals.

Here in the Bay Area, the place my husband and I have called our home for the past five years and truly, completely love, it's easy to feel insulated from so many of the world's problems. We do have earthquakes, but aside from that, it is always a treat to return home to the mild bay weather, and the fresh year-round, local, organic produce. By and large, the people are wonderful and I can easily ride my bike ten or eleven months out of the year. That's probably one of the most wonderful things about being "home" for most people; it's comfortable, and despite the few flaws, humans for the most part love where they land and call "home." But it's more important than ever to remember that we are all impacted by climate change. I travel to far-flung locations all over the globe, visiting backyards and kitchens and graveyards that have been ravaged by waves and saltwater intrusion. But all I have to do is walk out my front door, turn left, and walk straight for a mile to witness the rising tide. That is particularly true this next Feb. 7-9, 2013, during the last King tide of the year. On those few days, I will do just that, and I will take a photographer/videographer with me all along the bay, capturing the waves and noting what a higher sea level might mean in my own backyard. I encourage anyone who lives near the Pacific to do the same, and to send your pictures to drowningislands@gmail.com, or post them to the drowning islands site on Facebook. During the King tide, think about the people in the drowning islands who live 10 feet or less above the level of the sea, and please share your thoughts. More