Pacific island leaders expressed their concerns about climate change in the region at the 2016 Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit, held from 3-5 August in Brunei Darussalam.
Government representatives from Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu spoke about the dangers of rising sea levels and extreme weather events for Pacific island nations, and urged the region to take action by conserving forests for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Leaders also pledged their commitment to conserving forests for better local resilience to climate change, among other benefits.
“Forests will continue to play a vital role in many countries within the Asia-Pacific region in contributing to national economic development, food security, employment and in supporting livelihoods in rural areas,” said Osea Naiqamu, Fiji’s Minister for Fisheries and Forests.
“Climate change is real for Fiji. Not only for Fiji, but for small islands states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, all those other small island states in the Pacific,” he added.
Hear more from Pacific island leaders in the video below:
We want you to share Forests News content, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This means you are free to redistribute our material for non-commercial purposes. All we ask is that you give Forests News appropriate credit and link to the original Forests News content, indicate if changes were made, and distribute your contributions under the same Creative Commons license. You must notify Forests News if you repost, reprint or reuse our materials by contacting forestsnews@cifor-icraf.org.
