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Vice President Killion urges stronger actions on climate change

MILAN, Italy (FSM Information Service): December 11, 2003 - Vice President Redley Killion pressed for stronger international actions at the Ninth Session of the Conference of Parties (COP9) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Italy.

The Milan conference provides a forum for the 188 Parties to the Convention to assess the progress and governments' efforts to tackle the challenges of climate change. During Wednesday's high-level segment of round-table discussions, Vice President Killion urged all parties to undertake stronger measures to deal with climate change because small island developing states like the Federated States of Micronesia are extremely vulnerable to its effect.

Vice President Killion underscored his message by recounting that FSM has for the past 18 months seen an alarming increase and severity in the typhoons and storms, "as recent as last week, while we were negotiating here in Milan, my country was devastated again by another typhoon, which struck the western part of the island nation, and destroyed food crops, contaminated water supplies, and damaged homes and public facilities."

"In my island country, we have no choice but to address the impact of climate change because for us, climate change presents a genuine threat to the very survival of our peoples," Vice President Killion stated.

He went on to say that the traditional abilities long employed by his people to cope with these events are no longer adequate. For small islands developing states to survive the increasing climate events, the Vice President said new forms of adaptation have to be undertaken, preferably mitigation.

Vice President Killion continued that FSM is making efforts in the mitigation area, "although our efforts may seem insignificant in the global context, my country is sincere about its commitment to take effective measures to contribute to global efforts towards mitigating climate change."

He stated that renewable energy has become a priority policy in the FSM, but efforts to progressively implement effective measures are being compounded by extremely limited resources.

The Vice President stressed the need for funds to prioritize adaptation activities for small islands developing states as, "we are the ones who are suffering from the impacts of climate change, and are the least able to cope with it."

The industrialized countries account for at least 55% of 1990's level of greenhouse gas emissions. For the Kyoto Protocol to come into effect, these industrialized countries need to ratify the treaty.

Vice President Killion called on the industrialized countries to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.