The Marshall Islands is an island country to the north-east of Australia and the south-west of Hawaii, a presidential republic in free association with the United States, with the US providing defense, subsidies, and access to U.S. based agencies such as the FCC and the USPS.. The majority of the citizens of the Marshall Islands are of Marshallese descent, though there are small numbers of immigrants from the United States, China, Philippines and other Pacific islands.
For the Marshallese, the destructive power of the rising seas is already an inescapable part of daily life. Tony A. deBrum, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, tells the stories of people who wake up floating in the salty water, to convey the peril facing his island nation in the Pacific as sea levels rise.
It's one of the clearest injustices of climate change: The Marshall Islands likely won't exist if we warm the planet 2 degrees. Some people already are making the painful decision to leave. The roughly 70,000 residents of the Marshalls, because of their long military ties to Washington, are free to emigrate to the United States.
The debate over loss and damage has been intense because developed countries, first and foremost the United States, are expected to give billions of dollars to vulnerable countries like the Marshall Islands. Senior Republicans in Congress are already preparing for a fight, they say on behalf of the American taxpayer.
Source: www.nytimes.com
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