BECQ, NMC holds climate change and impacts seminar

The CNMI and the rest of the Pacific Region is in the frontlines of climate change, according to seminar held at the Northern Marianas College last Monday.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-Pacific Island Office Region 9 manager John McCarroll discussed the various impacts of climate change around the globe to students as well as people from various key agencies on island.

“This is serious. Climate change is serious. And here in the CNMI, you’re living in the frontlines of climate change,” McCarroll said.

Among the impacts that McCarroll mentioned which could also be noted in the CNMI are the increase of typhoon activities, increase in temperature, and sea level rise.

McCarroll said that about seven or nine out of the 10 hottest years were recorded in the year 2000s.

“If you’re looking at 2014, it was the hottest year worldwide since they started keeping record,” McCarroll said, “Then 2015 shattered that record. 2015 was the hottest year by a wide range.”

He also mentioned the situation being faced by low-lying islands such as the Marshall Islands.

“For the people who live in the Marshall Islands, which is an atoll nation, it’s a very low island, they have experienced four times since 2013 that the sea went completely over land on the capital island of Majuro,” McCarroll said.

“Before, that only happened once in a generation or so,” he added.

McCaroll also noted the effect of the increasing ocean temperature on the underwater ecosystem.

“Corals are in trouble. Ocean species are in trouble. Both because of bleaching as sea surface is getting warmer,” McCarroll said

McCaroll said the effects of climate change are getting bad and it’s going to get worse unless all of us do something.

In the CNMI, the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality-Division of Coastal Resources Management lead coastal resources planner Erin Derrington enumerated different initiatives that the division has taken in response to climate change.

Among these are the vulnerability assessments for Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.

McCarroll noted that the CNMI has been the first in the region to do such an assessment.

Derrington also said the Climate Change Working Group, which was established years ago but has lost momentum, recently reconvened this month to address various challenges regarding climate change. They renamed the group Reliency Working Group