"Save Tuvalu!" - an environmental action started 1997

SAVE TUVALU!

The islanders of the South Pacific country are just waiting to die
...and that might happen this winter!

This is why I am now taking the initiative to an action, with two targets:
- make Norway stand up as a responsible country, concerned about the global environment, at the important climate-conference in Kyoto in December. - make Norway, as the world’s second largest exporter of fossil fuels, take it’s part of the responsibilities for the future of the inhabitants of Tuvalu.

Tuvalu is the first country that really has felt the effects of the climate change, but it does not stop in the Pacific. It is of utmost importance to us all that it in Japan will be made decisions that really can help!

The action will take the following form:
These days I am working to arrange a meeting with the Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik. Here me and my Tuvaluan wife Emma and our daughter Sonia will be present together with the major Norwegian environmental organizations and other persons with competence in climate, and also the press.
In the meeting I will explain Tuvalu’s situation, and hand over an unofficial invitation from Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Bikenibeau Paeniu, where he invites the Norwegian PM to travel to Tuvalu to see for himself the problems that the country is facing, due to the climate-change.
I will also offer the Prime Minister and the TV-media some video-film that was recorded in May/June that shows what has happened in the small South Pacific nation and what the government and the people feel about their situation.
The environmental organizations and the other competent persons present will explain why it is so important for Norway to act now, not only to save the people of Tuvalu, but the environment for all of us on planet earth.
My hope is also that the Tuvaluan Prime Minister will send a letter to his Norwegian counterpart appealing to Norway to do all it can to help at the conference in Japan.

HOW CAN YOU PARTICIPATE - WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Well, in this action I am not asking you to give any money, just your support! Click "here to send an E-mail, and you will be on the list of people who support the action. Click here to see the list and read some of the comments.

No meeting with the PM, but a meeting in the National Committee for International Environmental Issues.
The Norwegian Prime Minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, send our request to the Norwegian Department for Environment, and yesterday (1st of December) I was summoned to a meeting in the National Committee for International Environmental Issues.
It was not a very positive meeting. The Norwegian Minister for Environment was unable to tell if the Norwegian delegation would come up with an actual proposal at the ongoing conference in Kyoto, or what stand on the proposals Norway would take. On the issue of Tuvalu, the Minister just made a bad joke that we do have winter-storms along the coast of Norway.
I have send another fax to the PM.

EXTRA: Yesterday, 5/1, I received the news that Pukapuka and Manihiki in the Cook-islands, east of Tuvalu, were hit by a hurricane. 16 people are still missing, six found dead. 12-meter high waves swept across the coral islands and washed the islanders on the ocean. The rest of the population is evacuated!

My connection to Tuvalu is that I sailed single-handed to the Pacific from Norway in a 22-feet yacht, Coco Loco. Later I returned and was married to the Polynesian Emma Toematagi. We built our home on the Tuvaluan atoll of Nukulaelae. After six years we were forced to leave - due to the dangerous climate-change with life-threatening hurricanes and rising sea-level.

If you want to know more about what is happening in Tuvalu, what the UN-climate-panel says about the situation, or what the inhabitants of the small country feel, - keep on reading:

EVERYBODY FLOATING? "It seems that the world do not care what happen to my people, they want to see everybody floating before they respond", the former Prime Minister Kamuta Laatasi of Tuvalu said, "but they might not even be able to do that. We might not have enough wood here to build paopaos (canoes)!" EL NIÑO STRONGER! Vice-president Al Gore of USA said the following on a El Niño top-meeting in California this October: "Our scientists say that the emission of greenhouse-gases contributes to that El Niño gets stronger and more destructive each time". VERY DANGEROUS! "Our islands are low-lying atolls, barely two meters above the surface, and much of the land-mass is already eroded and the sea has flooded on to the land. If the sea continues to rise, then we will have no islands; we will be disposed from these islands. So that is very dangerous", said the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Bikenibeu Paeniu. BURY OUR HEADS IN THE SAND? "The potential for serious climate disruption is real" US president Bill Clinton said in a speech opening a conference on climate change, "it would be a grave mistake to bury our heads in the sand and pretend the issue will go away. Although we do not know everything, what we do know is more than enough to warrant responsible action." THE CHILDREN SHOULD LIVE! "Soon big waves will roll across our islands. We will try to climb the coconut-trees, but then we will drown. I don’t mind dying, I am old now, but the children should live!", said my mother-in-law, Fakalei. We left, but she and the rest of Emma’s family are still there...! THOR HEYERDAHL: "Frightening!" "You have an important mission in telling your frightening message, you have experienced something that we other will feel later on if we don’t change our direction in time!", says Thor Heyerdahl in a letter to me 25/4-97. MAP OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC? Want to find out where Tuvalu is, click here!	The UN climate-panel (IPCC 1995): "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." THE RISE OF SEA-LEVEL UN climate-panel: "Average sea level is expected to rise as a result of thermal expansion of the oceans and melting of glaciers and ice-sheets. Models project a "best estimate" increase in sea level of about 50 cm from the present to 2100. Sea level would continue to rise at a similar rate in future centuries beyond 2100, even if concentrations of greenhouse gases were stabilized by that time, and would continue to do so even beyond the time of stabilization of global mean temperature." The Norwegian Meteorological Institute: "In case of a general sea-level rise, then the ocean will rise fastest close to equator due to the rotation of the earth." INCREASING NUMBER OF HURRICANES: The atolls of Tuvalu is situated in/near the equatorial belt (between 5 and 11 degrees) and this is not a place one would expect hurricanes. In the encyclopedias you can read that the development of the rotation of wind that forms a hurricane only can take place on latitudes higher than 5-10 degrees south or north. In the British Admiralties Pilot Books you will find that it is considered safe for hurricanes between equator and 8-9 degrees. List of hurricanes that have caused damages in Tuvalu this century: 1958 Hurricane NN, 1972 Hurricane Bebe, 1984 Hurricane Eric, 1990 Hurricane Sina, 1990 Hurricane Ofa, 1991 Hurricane Val, 1992 Hurricane Joni, 1992 Hurricane Kina, 1993 Hurricane Kina, 1993 Hurricane Nina, 1997 Hurricane Gavin, 1997 Hurricane Hina, 1997 Hurricane Kili. The development is frightening, and the most frightening is perhaps that the last hurricane took place in the middle of June, the season for the southeasterly trade winds. "The greenhouse effect and sea level rise threaten the very heart of our existence", the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Bikenibeau Paeniu.	TERRY DAHL'S WORLD: Index-page The solo-sailing The island-life The greenhouse- effect The books and novels The music The Sextant The food The Norwegian Pages

Finally I would like to remind everybody that the climate-convention that was signed at UN’s conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, included a declaration of intentions that the participating countries should stabilize their emissions of climate-gases at 1990-level before year 2000.

E-mail: terje@sydhav.no

SAVE TUVALU!

The islanders of the South Pacific country are just waiting to die ...and that might happen this winter!

PS: This action was launched in 1997, but the situation is still very much the same!

The islanders of the South Pacific country are just waiting to die
...and that might happen this winter!

PS:
This action was launched in 1997, but the situation is still very much the same!