Threat of warming compared to war

The 11 nations that make up the Pacific Small Island Developing States wrote to members of the UN's most powerful body to argue that the threat they face from a warmer world and rising sea levels is comparable to armed conflict.

The 15-nation Security Council oversees threats to international peace and security.

Nauru's UN Ambassador Marlene Moses, who chairs the island nations' group, said: "Climate change can devastate a country just as thoroughly as an invading army."

She said the Security Council must step in because the UN-led negotiations for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases and assistance for the most vulnerable nations had stalled.

"If (the) international community fails to take immediate action, then it will be complicit in the extinction of entire nations," she said.

The group said climate change was contributing to severe food and water shortages in the Pacific and already making refugees of people in Vanuatu, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.

The group's letter, sent by UN ambassadors from the 11 Pacific island nations, was pointedly critical of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that sponsored the last major climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark last December.

A last-minute political agreement fell short on specific steps to cool the planet, but urged deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the globe. It also set up the first significant programme of climate aid to poorer nations and adopted a goal of holding the rise in global temperatures below two degrees Celsius.

A promised $30 billion fund over the next three years, scaling up to $100 billion a year by 2020, was a key element.

Samoa's UN Ambassador, Aliioaiga Feturi Elisaia, said: "Climate refugees, conflict over increasingly scarce resources and the loss of territory are all impacts caused by climate change that will threaten global peace and security."