Environment : Rising Sea Level Submerging Island Nations

An article about some island nations was given minor importance and placement in a newspaper, but its subject matter was far from being minor or insignificant. The article was specifically about island nations submerging in to the sea because of the rising sea level. In the near future these island nations would cease to be nations and countries, because they would become landless and without any territories to call their own. Their island nations swallowed by the sea.

The article mentioned above is not fiction, it is a true story. In fact, some of these islands have started sinking into the sea.

Some countries are fighting over territories, others are talking about their economic development and exports, others are concerned with attracting tourists to visit their countries. Trivial concerns compared to the concern of these island nations worrying about how long would their countries exist as visible landmasses on the surface of the earth.

People from these islands nations are pleading for help because soon they would be drowning and would be totally annihilated as a people or nation. Some of these island nations have already made arrangements with other countries to repatriate their nationals to these host countries. For the past years, New Zealand has been accepting "climate refugees" from the island nation of Tuvalo in the Pacific, which is just about three feet above sea level and is expected to soon disappear under the sea.

Climate change or global warming are taken for granted by many people. Some people think these matters are not of immediate concern, just products of over imaginative minds, or just mere theories of paranoid scientists. But the fact is, we have been experiencing the effects of climate change and global warming for the past decades. And the effects have been getting worst through the years. Climate change and global warming are real phenomena that we can not ignore, and have to deal with them with urgency.

We Filipinos should be very much concerned with climate change and global warming. We have been experiencing its effects for the past several years with much destruction and loss of lives. Super typhoons, erratic weathers, extended periods of heavy of rains, drought and rising sea level are just some of the effects of these phenomena in our country. Our country, being a part of this so-called island nations, have the possibility of losing its smaller islands and low-lying coastlines. In fact, this is already happening in some parts of the country. A portion of a coastal barangay in the town of Aringay in La Union province had already submerged into the sea, partly because of soil erosion and the rising sea level.

Fortunately, we have bigger islands in our country to go to if our smaller islands go underwater, unlike these submerging island nations who have no other option but to flee to other countries.

It's time for  the nations of the world to get their acts together to fight, stop or minimize the effect of  climate change and global warming. Hopefully now, while we are still above the water.

Island nation of Nauru

With the rising sea level the picture above would soon be a common scenario
specially on so-called island nations or republics.

Related News Links :
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/49323/time-running-out-for-island-nation-of-kiribati-as-seas-rise-mass-relocation-eyed
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/04/world/asia/nauru-ocean-danger/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Alaskan village to disappear under water in a decade :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23346370