Island residents threatened by sea level seek shelter in the US

Floods in the Marshall Islands in 2014 caused a lot of damage and left hundreds of people homeless


About a thousand natives of Bikini Atoll, Oceania, asked to be taken to the United States due to the increase in sea levels, threatening their homes on the island where they live.

They had been backed by the US Bikini Atoll in the 1940s, to conduct testing atomic American bombs on site. They had been taken to Kili, another island in the Marshall archipelago, but their new home has suffered from the increase in the number of storms and the intensity of the tides.

At the time the island of change, an agreement was reached with the United States, establishing a fund to help the inhabitants of the atoll to move to Kili. This fund would pay for the construction of new homes.

Now, however, the islanders ask the US government to change the rules of how to fund that they can use it to relocate in the United States.

Residents say their homes are being invaded by the waters of the highest tide ever recorded on site, known as king tides. Salt is also penetrating the soil of the island, which threatens local agriculture and water supply.

Earlier this year, the local airstrip was completely flooded, leaving the isolated island.

"The Bikini natives came back to us and asked to bring this proposal to the United States, to ask the resettlement fund is used to send people to the United States and not just for (elsewhere) of the Marshall Islands," he said Tony Brum, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Marshall Islands.

"We have not seen the final text of the legislation, but the request that arrived was based (the fact that the island) Kili is uninhabitable due to climate change," he added.

The Department for the Interior of the United States has supported the inhabitants of Kili Island and proposed legislation in Congress that changes the terms of resettlement fund.

Change

An agreement between the Marshall Islands and the United States provides that the ancient inhabitants of Bikini Atoll have right to live, work and study in the United States with no restrictions on the duration of their stay.

"This is an appropriate course of action for the United States with regard to the welfare and livelihood of the Bikini people, because of the conditions of Kili and ejit islands, which are deteriorating, and the increased frequency of flooding due the king tides on the islands, "said Under Secretary of Interior of the Marshall Islands, Esther Kia'aina.

The government of the Marshall Islands said that experience of Bikini Atoll residents shows that there is a need for a new global agreement to tackle climate change.

The expectation falls on the international conference COP 21, which begins in late November in Paris, aiming at the achievement of the world's climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

The State islands are among the advocates that such an agreement stipulating a control in emissions of greenhouse gases to the rise in global temperature is below 1.5 ° C above pre-industrial levels in order to contain the rise in levels the seas.