The delegates in Bonn have talked ceaselessly about the importance of recovering the trust in the negotiating process which was so badly damaged at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen last December.  Some say what this really means is that there has been no progress on  the fundamental issues at stake. “During this meeting we have just been agreeing on the terms, not setting out our different positions”, said Andrea Albán, one of the Colombian delegates. There is optimism, the delegates say. But on first sight it looks as though world leaders aren’t in a hurry to seal a deal.

It looks like the  bureaucrats and journalists will keep filling the pockets of airlines and hotels for a long time to come. This would be fine if the meeting was to decide the budget of the next World Cup, or the winner of an arts competition. But the issue that keeps bringing hundreds of delegates together is the planet’s path to destruction, with millions of people hungry, thirsty and facing thunderstorms and hurricanes in houses made of sticks.

Even so, business still looks to many to be more important than an unbalanced planet, where the poor get poorer every day while others refuse to change their lifestyles and excessive energy use. There hasn’t been any agreement here on technology transfer, or on how much money there will be for climate for adaptation and mitigation, or on who will manage it. The deadlock could last a long time, as de Boer thinks.

His estimate of how long the negotiations could last is worrying for a country like Colombia. It could mean the thawing of the high altitude glaciers and the continuing reduction of the moorlands, those places in the high mountains where the water that supplies most of the country’s population starts its journey.

Glacial melt will also mean sea level rise. Researchers in Colombia say a sea level rise of one metre – which scientists believe could happen by 2100 – would inundate 5,100 kms of the coast, affecting 1,500,000 people. So far the emissions reduction targets announced by 37 developed countries and 38 developing ones will achieve an estimated 13% reduction in global emissions, if they happen. But scientists have recommended a reduction of 25-40% to stop global average temperatures rising beyond 2C above their pre-industrial level.  Some scientists say the world should seek to limit the rise to 1.5C, while others maintain that it is on course to reach 4C, unless there are radical changes.

Cristiana Figueres, de Boer’s successor as UNFCCC executive secretary, says the negotiators know the actual targets aren’t enough.  Andrea García, another member of the Colombian delegation, thinks de Boer’s statement about there being more than a decade of negotiations ahead simply confuses the delegates. She welcomes the arrival of Figueres, who she considers more progressive than her predecessor. But Figueres herself doesn’t talk about a 10-year perspective. She told journalists she thinks it will take 20 or 30 years…

During the ongoing UN climate change conference in the German city of Bonn, just as Nepalese officials announced an initiative to form a group, the Mountain Alliance Initiative, two Central Asian nations and one from the Caucasus outsmarted them by notifying the UN that they were establishing a similar group.

Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikstan got together and wrote to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) saying they had agreed to establish the Group of Mountain Landlocked Developing Countries.

Landlocked Nepal’s officials say the group it has announced will be effective in getting mountainous countries heard in international forums like UN climate conference.

“This alliance has been initiated so that mountainous countries can raise their climate-related concerns and influence the UNFCCC’s decision-making process to our advantage,” said Nepal’s environment ministry secretary Ganesh Joshi.

The three rival countries have stated almost the same reason for their move.

In their letter to the UNFCCC, they wrote: “We have agreed to establish the Group of Mountain Landlocked Developing Countries for protecting and lobbying for the interests of this group of countries in the framework of the UNFCCC’s negotiation process.”

While Nepalese officials have prepared a calendar to hold workshops and meetings between mountainous countries before requesting the UNFCCC to officially recognise the MAI, the other three have already done that.

“We request to the secretariat to take note of the new group and include it in all its listings,” the letter from Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikstan read.

The UNFCCC has officially listed its member countries under several groups, including small island states, developing countries and least developed countries.

Nepalese officials think adequate attention has not been paid to the issues of mountainous countries in international climate negotiations.

“Our mountain ecology stands so vulnerable to climate change and we believe Nepal can ideally lead to bring that point to the fore,” said Madhab Karki, Deputy Director of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which is helping Nepal in its bid.

Although judged susceptible to the impacts of climate change, the Himalayan region has seen very little scientific research.

The most talked-about impact has been the retreat of Himalayan glaciers due to temperature increases caused by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

That has triggered fears of lakes and rivers swelling to dangerous levels in the near term and running dry in the long run, spelling disaster for millions of people in the region who rely on the river systems.

Increasing floods, droughts and landslides, the northward movement of some plant and animal species, a drop in water availability and agricultural production have been some of the observed results many link to climate change, although these are yet to be established scientifically.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called the Himalayas a white spot, meaning there is a big information gap in this region.

And there are concerns that nothing much is being done to find out what has been happening to the mountain ecology as climate changes.

That was why, Nepalese officials say, the country’s Prime Minister, Madhab Kumar Nepal, addressing the climate change summit in Copenhagen last December, had proposed forming a common platform of mountain countries.

But while the Nepalese administration took time to move on with the idea, officials from Kyrgyzstan were already taking the lead.

“We had last year even before the Copenhagen conference floated the idea of bringing the mountainous countries together,” says Ysmail Dairov, who heads the Regional Mountain Centre of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek..

But he said several countries, particularly from South Asia, had not responded to the idea.

“At first they said this was something that would have to be done at the foreign ministry level. And even when we managed to send a letter from the Kyrgyz foreign ministry to the foreign ministries of these countries, there was no response.”

Nepalese officials say even they were approached by the Kyrgyz officials to join the Group of Mountain Landlocked Developing Countries.

“We don’t need to do that as we have support from many mountainous countries, including those in Latin America,” said Nepal’s environment secretary Joshi.

“Moreover, we are not just bringing together landlocked mountainous countries; our support base is quite a bit wider.”

That remains to be seen. But for now, the competition between Nepal and its rivals has left some mountainous countries bewildered.

“We don’t know what we do now,” says Abas Basir, Deputy Director of Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency.

“But what we do know is that if they remain divided like this, the whole effort of amplifying the voice of mountainous countries will collapse.”

“Some one billion people have little access to clean water, another 2.5 bn don’t have access to sanitation. Climate change will make this situation worse,” said outgoing UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer this week in Bonn, where climate negotiations have been continuing.

For Africa alone these figures are 350 million and 500 million respectively said Bai-Mas Taal, Gambia’s former Minister of Water Affairs, now executive secretary of the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW).

Climate change will affect weather patterns, rainfall cycles, river flow and soil moisture content, which in turn determine floods, droughts and agricultural yields, argues the Global Water Partnership (GWP), an umbrella for 2,176 water organisations in 153 countries.

“There is an international convention regulating water resource management, but there’s no single UN body dealing specifically with water issues, and water is marginalised in the climate negotiations,” says GWP executive secretary Dr. Ania Grobicki. “Water evaporated from the negotiating texts in Copenhagen” (where the last UN climate summit took place in December 2009).

“We are calling for a programme on water, climate and development to be established under the UNFCCC’s work on adaptation,” Grobicki announced at an 8 June press conference.
The aims of the programme would be to incorporate Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) thinking and practice into efforts to combat climate change.

Such a programme would also open up the water sector for adaptation funding, something that is badly needed, says the GWP. “In the past couple of decades investment in water infrastructure and water information systems has declined,” said Grobicki. But the current US  $30 billion fast track funding on the table is not enough. “To achieve water security in Africa alone more than $16 billion is needed and that calculation is based on spending only $50 per person that currently doesn’t have access to clean water,” stressed Taal.

Adaptation measures would include building a large network of storage dams throughout Africa, Grobicki told CCMP. “Most agriculture is rain-fed. As climate variability increases and temperatures rise. water security drops radically, but dams ensure water is available throughout the year.”

“Water-saving technologies can assist farmers to use their scarce water resources efficiently,” said Grobicki . “Drip irrigation offers huge potential for saving water in rural areas, while remote sensing can be used to inform farmers about the moisture content of the soil so they know how much water they need to use to grow their crops.”

Nearly 35 people were reported dead in Kenya in the first few weeks of January, following heavy rains. The Meteorological Department says the rains will subside by the end of the month, but the destruction in their wake is linked to years of environmental degradation. Rosalia Omungo reports on the reality beyond the Copenhagen summit.

Colombia’s indigenous peoples are working together to create an adaptation plan against climate change, which will bring together their own traditional knowledge with outside help from other agencies.

“It is better to die fighting in a war than to die from thirst”, says Walter Peña as he walks on the stones at the bottom of a dry stream after six rainless months in the department of Cauca, part of the Macizo Colombiano, a mountainous region in Colombia’s south-west.

Walter, a peasant from the region, has not seen a drought like this in almost 30 years. People who live some distance from the rivers usually transfer river water to their houses via small open water channels. But the recent drought has caused the channels to develop large cracks and the water doesn’t reach their houses any more.
 
The dry season also brings a wind blowing in every direction, drying every plant in its path. “This didn’t happen before. With this situation, there is no way to protect any plantation. This is all crazy, some water springs are gone,” adds Walter.

Unpredictable weather

Something similar is happening to the indigenous communities living in the area, home to seven ethnic groups. During the last 10 years José Domingo Caldón, a leader of the Kokonuco Indian community, has seen the dry and rainy seasons getting longer every year.
 
Before, he says, the indigenous authorities could predict winter and summer time, as well as the best time to cultivate, “They used to ask Nature’s permission”.
 
Now the weather changes from one day to the next and people can no longer predict what is going to happen tomorrow or when the best time will be to cultivate or harvest. The old authority figures are dying and taking their knowledge with them, and the young people are not maintaining it. As they integrate into Western society they leave behind their customs and stop believing in traditions and ancient wisdom
 
“Now people are cultivating anywhere and at any time. This is greatly affecting the socio-economic situation of the community as many crops have been damaged”, Jose Domingo laments. “It is the responsibility of humans for not respecting the environment”, he adds.
 
He knows his people cannot remain inactive in the face of this situation.

Joining forces

That is why his community and four other Indian communities (Poblazón, Quintana, Puracé, Paletará and Kokonuco) have joined forces. They are developing an adaptation plan to reduce their vulnerability to climate change.
 
Supporting them are two peasant associations, Asoproquintana and Asocampo, with the help of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), alongside four agencies of the United Nations (UNDP, FAO, UNICEF and PAHO, the Panamerican Health Organization) and some local authorities.
 
It is the first time that four UN agencies have worked together on a joint climate change project, with the aim of using the results to develop a national climate change policy.
 
The plan includes water resources management, the conservation of the environment, and health protection, all within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals. The agencies have already identified several traditional practices that may be useful for adaptation programmes.

Traditional meetings create early warning systems

Manuel Mompotes, former Governor of the Puracé community and a local leader of the project, believes that one of the strengths of the indigenous peoples is their custom of meeting and discussing problems. Community meetings where leaders take collective decisions and exercise justice in the Indian way are for them a tradition.
 
“With this strength we can get the active participation of the communities, raise awareness and achieve goals in adaptation”, says Mompotes. And through these meetings, he says, the participants can also create early warning systems.

Trueque improves food security

UN officials say trueque (bartering) is another traditional activity which can help people adapt to climate change. Bartering events, which unite people from different ethnic groups and also peasants, take place every two months in different parts of the region. “It is the place to exchange information and to create links between people living in different climatic zones”, says Luis Sanchez, from the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation.
 
He points out that bartering also makes a contribution to food security because people exchange goods from different zones, helping to supplement diets.
 
The Kokonuco community, for example, has often moved in search of new settlements. When the community resettles, it brings seeds which it has learned to protect and to adapt in the right mixtures to new climates. Now the different families are spreading the seeds of best quality to ensure food security. “This is autonomous community knowledge and it is a strategy to face climate change”, José Domingo says.

Harmful traditions to be tackled

But not every traditional practice is beneficial for the environment.
 
Burning the ground during droughts to prepare the soil for planting is something indigenous people have done for years. But the practice is condemned by environmentalists because it destroys soil nutrients and is a threat to drainage basins so it becomes a threat to food security.
 
This practice is one reason why some ecologists think indigenous people pose as much of a threat to the environment as anyone else. What’s more, taking care of the environment may not be a priority for many people already dealing with conflict and natural disaster. 
 
“As part of the project we will analyse what are the traditions that must be strengthened and which ones should be reconsidered to better adapt to climate change”, says Luis Sanchez, the FAO representative.
 
It is a challenge the UN project must address if it is to succeed.

Jeanne Meintjes of Eco-Marine kayak tours in Walvis Bay and her tourist admire the seals / Mike Lloyd

Smoothly Jeanne Meintjes steers her kayak across the Walvis Bay lagoon, a precious wetland on the Namibian coast. Around her the water is alive with hundreds of seals, darting around and dipping up and down in the surf, vying for her attention.

“This year there are about 20,000 seals on the peninsula,” she explains, a particularly daring pup gnawing at her paddle. For the past decade the sturdy fifty-something has taken tourists onto the ocean to see birds, seals, dolphins and whales.

She doesn’t know about climate change, but one thing is clear: no fish to eat, no seals. “When there’s little fish, the beach is littered with spontaneous abortions [seal foetuses], the survivors shuffling around with hollow eyes. It’s awful,” she says.

Billions of fish wiped out

The Benguela’s rich fishing grounds are a result of south-westerly trade winds propelling cold, nutrient-rich water upwards from depths of 200 metres.

“This makes the system extremely productive, but lately we have witnessed some disturbing regime shifts that can only be explained by climate change,” says Hashali Hamukuaya, Executive Secretary of the Benguela Current Commission (BCC).

“Benguela Niños are becoming frequent and intense,” he points out. Like its Pacific twin El Niño, the African variant causes influxes of nutrient-poor tropical water to trigger a deficit of oxygen in the sea which makes it hard for fish to breathe, “Species that cannot migrate will die,” says Hamukuaya. “The last time this happened we lost billions of fish.”

Some fish species are disappearing, which has led to some Cape Fur seals having to migrate away from the area / Mike Lloyd

Oxygen deprivation also causes spontaneous algal blooms, or red tides, threatening the profitable rock lobster and oyster industries. Meanwhile some fish species seem to have disappeared altogether, affecting the fate of top predators. Seals are already migrating and scientists fear for the future of the African penguin. Trawling and eco-tourism could decline.

“There is no anchovy left in the system, and sardine stocks have collapsed,” says Hamukuaya. “Despite very favourable conditions in the past decade pilchards haven’t recovered, and we don’t know why.”

Marine ecosystems warming up

In 2008 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that 61 out of 64 large marine ecosystems were warming up because of climate change.

The Benguela is one of them. The temperature of the current has risen by one degree Celsius in a few decades.

“This leads to displacement of fish and affects spawning patterns,” says Hamukuaya. “The socio-economic consequences are enormous. In southern Angola many fishing communities lost their livelihoods.”

A seal exploring an underwater camera. Research has shown the Benguela current has warmed up by one degree Celsius in recent decades / Mike Lloyd

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 42 million people worldwide live off fishing, while for another 2.8 billion fish is one of their major sources of protein.

At the World Ocean Conference in May in Manado, Indonesia, ministers from fishing nations voiced their concerns over climate change and the risks it poses to” global food security, economic prosperity, and the well-being of human populations.”

In Namibia fisheries constitute about six per cent of GDP, employing 13,000 people, all eager to keep their jobs in an economy that averages 40 per cent unemployment.

Factory worker Isabel Dewee, 48, from Walvis Bay cans fish caught off the Moroccan coast, where Namibian trawlers have ventured in search of better fishing grounds. “The seasonal work provides me with a little extra income,” she says. “I work twelve hours a day from seven till seven, sometimes even on Saturdays and Sundays.”

Jobs on the line

But the industry faces over-capacity, and as yields fail to materialise, jobs are on the line.

“The last time I set foot aboard a ship was in 2008,” complains Malakia Haugo, 35. Like many, the fisherman hangs around the port, passport and seaman’s book at the ready, hoping for a job. Haugo used to clear USD$300 per month working on a trawler. “But now I just do odd jobs and wait for a chance to set sail again.”

Scientists seem to agree that the changes cannot be attributed to the volatile nature of the current, but that they are linked to global warming.

“We know that wind patterns are changing and sea surface temperatures are rising,” says Lucinda Fairhurst of Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI). “This for instance contributes to sea storm surges, which affects fish nurseries and the number of days the ports can be used.”

ICLEI is in Walvis Bay to help the city prepare for rising sea levels. “From what we have seen this will be one of the worst affected communities in Africa,” Fairhurst says.

Urgent study launched

“Namibia joins other developing nations in being concerned now,” says Professor Geoff Brunditt, director of the Centre of Marine Studies in Cape Town. “Shifts in the movement of fish stocks are just one immediate concern. We urgently need better understanding of climate variability and its impact on the local economy.”

For the next three years Benguela countries, supported by Norwegian scientists, will interpret tons of data to establish how exactly climatic change affects the current.

Benguela dolphins exploring the bay / Mike Lloyd

As Jeanne Meintjes excitedly points out a pair of Benguela dolphins that have come to check out the intruders in their kayaks, one cannot help wondering whether three years is fast enough.

“The noise was deafening, louder than thunder” remembers Sher Afzal, a resident of Sonoghure village located in Chitral district in Pakistan’s Hindu Kush mountain range. “It was past midnight and I ran out with my four children and saw the water rushing into the village. We barely managed to escape. We saved ourselves but lost everything else.”

Sonoghure was once considered the most beautiful village in Chitral, known as ‘paradise on earth’ in local songs and folktales for its picturesque orchards, towering poplar trees and old stone houses built on a cliff overlooking Chitral River. Now half the village lies beneath 15 ft of boulders and stones brought down in a massive flood caused by a melting glacier on the mountain above. Around 112 homes out of a total of 330 in the village were destroyed.

Mountain communities living in these remote valleys depend upon their goats, fruit trees and terraced fields for their livelihoods. They are not responsible for climate change yet they are among the first victims of rising temperatures in the region. For them climate change is not a future prediction but a present reality.

Mountain temperatures rising

The villagers of Sonoghure survived the flood which lasted for three days in July 2007 without loss of life, although they lost much of their livestock. They had been forewarned by Focus Humanitarian Assistance (FOCUS), an international emergency response and disaster risk management agency, which had been monitoring the glacier. FOCUS Pakistan also trained several volunteers in the village and surrounding areas, giving them a stockpile of provisions which helped the community to cope after the flood.

Scientists warn that temperatures in this mountain region are rising faster than in the plains. Nusrat Nasab, Deputy Executive Officer of FOCUS Pakistan says they have identified 155 vulnerable lakes in Chitral and the northern areas of Pakistan, 15 of which are particularly vulnerable. “Several-thousand-year-old glaciers are rapidly disappearing in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region” says Pradeep Mool, a scientist working for the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu. “As valley glaciers retreat, glacial lakes are forming.”

Glaciers melting worldwide

The flood that devastated the village is known as a glacial lake outburst flood or GLOF. These occur when lakes formed by the rapid retreat of glaciers increase in volume, finally bursting out of the unconsolidated moraine and ice which dams them. This leads to a sudden discharge of huge volumes of water and debris which can be catastrophic for those living downstream. Several glacial lake floods have been recorded in nearby Gilgit district as well as across the borders in China, India, Nepal and Bhutan.
 
“I believe that the glaciers in this region are melting at a staggering rate,” says Indian glaciologist Syed Iqbal Husnain of the Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). “Some glaciers appear to be growing, but it is the melting water underneath which is pushing them up. Sub-glacier lakes are increasing which then burst as GLOFs.” In fact, GLOFs are occurring in other mountain regions as well, in British Columbia, Central Asia, Europe and South America.

Village fears another deluge

In Sonoghure, villagers observed water seeping out of the ground near the glacier shortly before the flood hit the village – it is likely a lake formed beneath the glacier, which is still quite large. There are fears it might burst again, since there was heavy snowfall in Chitral last winter which has fed the glacier. If so, it will create more hardship. “The flood destroyed not only our fields and homes, but also the village hospital, schools, roads, water pipelines, electricity poles and swept away three bridges on the river that connected the village with the main road,” says Sahib Faraz, the FOCUS designated ‘village captain’ who was in charge of the response effort.

“We lost walnut and mulberry trees that were over 1000 years old. Each household had an orchard and we could sell one sack of walnuts for around Rs 10,000 (US$120) to the local tradesmen. Now we are taking loans and struggling to get by as daily wage labourers. We can’t even afford to send our children to college for further studies”.

Homeless two years on

It has been two years since the disaster and villagers say the government is still not helping them rebuild their infrastructure. A rickety bridge across the river connects the village to the main road and it takes well over an hour to get to the village from the nearest town of Booni by jeep. “We have lost our livelihoods. Some of us are still living in tents. Please let the outside world know what is going on here,” says Sahib Faraz.
 
The mountain villagers attribute the catastrophe to God’s will. “Perhaps we made some mistake and did not make God happy” says 73-year-old Bulbul Zar, who cannot remember such a flood in his lifetime or his father’s. Not many make the connection between rising temperatures caused by carbon emissions in the towns and melting valley glaciers in the mountains. Even if they do, they feel helpless.

Nowhere else to go

As for their future plans, they don’t have too many options. Those who have some resources are rebuilding their houses on top of the rocks where the flood hit the village, others have moved in with relatives whose homes were spared. A flood could certainly happen again, but no one knows when. They really have nowhere else to go and the realisation is sinking in that the government is not going to give them alternative land as compensation. Landholdings are very scarce in these high mountains.
 
The boulders and sand covering the village act as a stark reminder of the glacier that roared down the mountain and changed their lives forever. Throughout Chitral district, villagers look up at their glacier-clad mountains, and fear that what happened in Sonoghure could happen to them as well.

Representatives of the smaller countries of the region, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan, were speaking during a side event at the UN Climate Change Convention conference in Copenhagen. The event was organised by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD),  a regional knowledge development centre serving the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayas – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan.

“The most vulnerable countries in the world are in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, which is home to 1.3 billion people. We are facing increasing threats of floods, droughts and forest fires, and our agriculture-based economy is at huge risk”, said Nepal’s prime minister, Madhav Kumar.

Nepal stressed that the poorer countries of the region are suffering even though they have made no contribution to global warming.

“Nepal is responsible for only 0.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, yet it is at the receiving end of global warming”,  the prime minister said. The director general of ICIMOD,  Andreas Schild, pointed out that the HKH region contains 100 square kilometres of ice and 33,000 cubic metres of ice mass, which act as a source of water for one-third of the world’s population.

Bhutan’s agriculture minister, Pema Gyamtsho, said each country of the region faced a potentional threat from climate change. Its impact had already started taking a toll, the minister said. “Some glaciers in our country have retreated  by 200 metres. We have over 2,000 glacial lakes, of which 25 are potentially dangerous,” he said.

He stressed the need to take integrated adaptation measures in South Asia, where every country faced threats which could cause damage near at hand. “All of us need to have a common strategy. And I think we need to seal a deal at the regional level”, he said.

Mostapha Zaher, director general of Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), said that while his country had suffered from conflict for the last 30 years, “now it faces the challenge of climate change”. He said it was a huge challenge for a poor country like Afghanistan.

“It needs high technology and huge funds to cope with such a challenge. I think the developed countries should have no problem in providing this to the least developed countries,” Zaher said.

“Afghanistan’s economy is largely based on agriculture and 80 per cent of our population depend on farming for their livelihoods. But continuous droughts are posing a serious threat to the agro-economy and food security.”

The representative from Pakistan, Dr Arshad Muhammad Khan, is also the director of the Global Change Impact Studies Centre,  a think tank set up to help national planners and decision makers in areas such as climate, water, energy, food, agriculture, health, ecology and new technologies.

He said the “most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change is Pakistan.”  Khan said Pakistan’s entire river system depended on the Himalayan glaciers. “Pakistan’s lifeline is the Indus river system which gets 75 to 80 per cent of its water from the glaciers. But with these glaciers facing threats, our irrigation network, the world’s largest, is also exposed to danger,” he said.

How climate change is affecting Ladakh, a cold desert up in the Himalayas… and how locals are coping with the problem of water scarcity.

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives says:  “We have a fundamental right to life. If that is challenged, we have to make it a human rights issue, not just an environmental one.”

He was speaking to Nalaka Gunwardane, director of the newly released film ”Small Islands – Big Impact”,  in an interview which forms the basis of the film.

President Nasheed says in the interview that climate change is both a global human rights issue and a security threat to small, low-lying island nations like his.

Under some scientific scenarios, he said, small islands such as the Maldives could go under water in no time. “This is a very real threat to us,” he warned. “We will die if this goes on.”

Democracy and good governance were vital elements in humanity’s struggle against climate change, he said.

Traditional methods of adapting to climate change such as physical structures like  embankments and breakwaters would not be enough.

Climate-induced pressures are already affecting fisheries and tourism, the two most important sectors of the Maldivian economy, President Nasheed said. “Even now, some islanders have to move home from where they lived. There are serious coastal erosion problems. So that’s all very real, and it’s happening now.”

In a message to the Copenhagen climate summit he said that the damage had already been done, and “there is no point in pointing fingers.”

“Don’t be stupid. Going on and on about who did it is not going to save us,” he said. But he asked the developed countries for funds and technology to save poorer countries from disaster.

The film featured the fate of small island nations which are vulnerable to climate change. With an average ground level of 1.5 meters (5 feet) above sea level, the Maldives is the lowest country on the planet.

The film shows how the Arctic ice is melting and sea water is expanding as global temperatures increase, making sea levels rise. This is expected gradually to submerge the Maldives and other low-lying islands.

It shows how other effects of climate change such as coastal erosion, the intrusion of salt water into fresh water sources, and extreme weather events could make some islands uninhabitable.

Recently the Maldivian Cabinet met under water, giving what many believed to be a strong message to the developed countries of the impact of climate change on the small and most vulnerable island nations, which include Sri Lanka. The magazine Time named President Nasheed a Hero of the Environment for his climate advocacy.

In March 2009, President Nasheed announced that the Maldives would become the world’s first fully carbon-neutral nation within a decade. To do this, it would vigorously pursue renewable energy and green energy sources to replace its current fossil fuel dependence.

Small Islands – Big Impact was produced by TVE Asia Pacific in collaboration with the COM+ Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development.