The Pacific Islands region is experiencing climate change. Key indicators of the changing
climate include rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, rising air and sea temperatures,
rising sea levels and upper-ocean heat content, changing ocean chemistry and increasing
ocean acidity, changing rainfall patterns, decreasing base flow in streams, changing
wind and wave patterns, changing extremes, and changing habitats and species distributions.
Currently, the most vulnerable areas include low islands (atoll islands and other

There is no doubt that our climate is changing. This will
pose huge challenges to nations, organisations, enterprises,
cities, communities and individuals. Developing
countries will suffer most from the adverse consequences
of climate change, and some highly vulnerable regions
and people are already being affected.
There is increasing agreement that if temperatures rise
by no more than 2 °C the earth’s integrity can be preserved
and many of the potentially grave consequences
of climate change could be avoided. This threshold is

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,
as is now evident from observations of
increases in global average air and ocean temperatures,
widespread melting of snow and ice,
and rising global average sea level.”

At the first United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) held in Berlin in 1995, Atiq
Rahman of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies gave an
impassioned speech to the delegates and warned, “If climate change makes
our country uninhabitable . . . we will march with our wet feet into your
living rooms.”1 Climate change related impacts such as floods, tsunamis,
hurricanes, and drought have already caused millions of people around the

Every person has the following fundamental duties to himself and his descendants and to others to protect the Republic of Vanuatu and to safeguard the national wealth, resources and environment in the interests of the present generation and of future generations (Art. 7d, Constitution of the Republic of Vanuatu).