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Showing posts from March, 2015

Vanuatu

Half of the island of Vanuatu is now homeless in the wake of Cyclone Pam , with 90% of structures reported as damaged and many towns and villages without safe drinking water. You can't attribute a single weather event to climate change, but you can point out the quandary of having to rebuild a country (probably through loans from the Asian Development Bank and other international financial institutions, loans that will drive the country further into debt and make future development and resettlement difficult) that will almost certainly be underwater in a few decades. In 2012/3, the House and the Senate voted to allocate $60 billion in aid towards relief and redevelopment in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. But at the end of last year, the House took major steps to block Obama's commitment of a paltry $3 billion to the UN climate fund.  All of the top 10 countries most at risk to climate change  impacts are in the Global South (Vanuatu and other small island states aren'