KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's Pacific Island neighbours face major climate change impacts, but are ill-equipped to cope.
In the central and eastern Pacific the tiny nations are at an increased likelihood this century of severe cyclones which destroy vulnerable infrastructure, housing and food supplies.
Storms will have the potential to badly damage expensive assets such as ports, roads and airports.
Potential problems include reduced fresh water supplies, coral bleaching and increased erosion and land inundation from a gradual rise in sea level.
Penehuro Lefale, manager for international co-operation and development at the New Zealand MetService, said yesterday the impact of climate change was already a reality for many small islands.
Ocean surface and island air temperatures had risen by 1degC since 1910 and sea level rises peaked at more than 3mm a year from 1950 to 2000.
Mr Lefale, a lead author on the small islands chapter in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, said small islands were highly sensitive to climate change and sea level rise because they were already located in a natural hazard zone of tropical cyclones.
International airports on many islands were sited on or close to the coast and often the main road network ran along the coast. "Under sea-level rise scenarios, many of them are likely to be at serious risk," he said.
But he later told the Herald major events such as cyclones were the more immediate risk because the timeframe by which countries would be seriously affected by sea level rise remained uncertain.
