Leaders From Pacific Island Nations Make Last Collective Plea To Help Address The Health Impacts Of Climate Change Before U.N. Talks In Paris

by Diana Tomale / Nov 25, 2015 07:41 PM EST

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama met Pacific Island nations leaders last week to make last collective plea to address health impacts of climate change. (Photo by Simon Watts / Getty Images)

Leaders from the Pacific island nations gathered at a summit in Fiji last week were they have made their last collective appeal to help address the health impacts of climate change.

The Guardian reported Nov. 1 that the summit held in Fiji was the last major meeting of the leaders from Pacific island nations before the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Fiji's Foreign Minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola said their country is facing the recurrence of diseases brought about by climate change. These diseases include typhoid fever, dengue fever, leptospirosis, as well as diarrhoeal diseases.

Meanwhile, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said that Pacific island nations "are innocent bystanders in the greatest act of folly of any age."

"Unless the world acts decisively in the coming weeks to begin addressing the greatest challenge of our age, then the Pacific, as we know it, is doomed," he said.

"The industrialized nations putting the welfare of the entire planet at risk so that their economic growth is assured and their citizens can continue to enjoy lives of comparative ease. All at the expense of those of us in low-lying areas of the Pacific and the rest of the world."

The Fijian prime minister added that he is concern that their "interests are about to be sacrificed."

"I won't be going to Paris wearing the usual friendly, compliant Pacific smile. In fact, I won't be going to Paris in a Pacific frame of mind at all," Bainimarama.

During the summit at Fiji, leaders reportedly laid down the problems caused by climate change and the measures on how to resolve these problems.

The UN talks on climate change is slated to start on November 30 until December 11 in Paris. Last month, the UN has already released the first draft of the negotiating transcript for the upcoming conference.

CBS News noted Oct. 5 that the conference on climate change aims for a grand agreement to "keep the rise in worldwide temperatures since pre-industrial times below 2 degrees Celsius."

According to reports, the governments of more than 190 nations will gather for the UN talks on climate change in Paris.