The United Kingdom on Thursday announced the appointment of a special envoy to tackle security threats from climate change while small island leaders called for urgent action, describing the issue as a life-or-death issue for their people at the climate talks in the Turkish resort town of Antalya.
“It is time to move past the talking,” said Alix Sebastien Pillay, vice president of the Indian Ocean Island of Seychelles. “For Seychelles, climate action is not simply an environmental priority. It is a fundamental issue to our national security.”
Pillay was speaking on the second day of the leaders’ summit at the UN climate summit, where Government leaders addressed the state of a warming world and what to do about it. While all the globe is threatened by climate change’s souped-up storms and floods, island nations are among the hardest hit, as they also have to deal with rising seas swallowing up their land.