Kiribati's president seeks global 'partnership' to combat climate change

'The message we have been delivering individually is that for the most vulnerable countries, the need to address climate change is urgent,' Kiribati's president Anote Tong told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat. The president fears that Kiribati would become uninhabitable in 30 to 60 years because of rising sea levels and the contamination of its fresh water supplies and he called on world leaders to take action to build climate resilience in vulnerable countries as well as to cut emissions.

'To strengthen SIDS' resilience we must see disaster risk reduction as climate change adaptation as two sides of the same coin,' said the head of the United Nations Development Program, Helen Clark at the UN conference on small island developing states (SIDS) in Samoa, as reported by Radio Australia.