Endangered Islands Sound Climate Change Alarm

UNITED NATIONS - Small islands, home to 5 percent of the world's population, could disappear under rising oceans as the Earth warms, delegates from 37 small island states warned on Monday.

"As the proverbial canary in the coal mine, small island states have repeatedly raised the alarm bells of global warming over the last 15 years," Solomon Islands Foreign Minister Patteson Oti told a news conference.

He said the Solomon Islands and members of the Alliance of Small Island States faced a future of more violent storms, depleted fish stocks, bleached coral reefs and even annihilation if the world fails to deal with climate change.

"Climate change is the symptom and not the disease," said Oti. "The disease is our unsustainable means of production, worsened by unsustainable patterns of consumption."

The alliance comprises 37 U.N. members and six observers from all the oceans and major seas. The group is meeting on the sidelines of a U.N. conference on climate change to raise awareness and funds for island states' plight.

A landmark report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year said human activities such as burning fossil fuels and forests are very likely causing climate change that will lead to more deadly storms, heat waves, droughts and floods.