PResident Barack Obama highlighted the impact of climate change on the world’s most vulnerable countries during a meeting with heads of state from small island nations on Tuesday.
About 40 countries in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) negotiating group at the COP 21 climate conference are facing rising sea levels that threaten to submerge their habitable lands.
The meeting with Obama, which was attended by leaders from Barbados, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and others, was aimed at elevating the countries’ role in the Paris negotiations. AOSIS countries pushed for more ambitious action to stem greenhouse gas emissions at the Paris conference. Current projections suggest that some countries could disappear completely within decades without action.
“These nations are not the most populous nations, they don’t have large armies,” Obama said. “But they are entitled to dignity and a sense of belonging.”
Obama also said he had a special connection to island nations given his time in Hawaii and Indonesia as a child: “I’m an island boy,” he said.
Read more: Meet the president trying to save his island nation from climate change
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