Tonga

Tonga and climate change: "Our people are on the line, our cultures are going to disappear"

One World TV interviewed Sione Taulo Fulivai from the small Pacific Island state of Tonga on the last day of the UN climate negotiations at COP17 in Durban. Small Island states face rising atmospheric and sea surface temperatures, rising sea levels spoiling freshwater reservoirs and agriculture and threatening to innundate their land, and changing rainfall pattens. They are on the frontline of global warming.

Tonga is a nation of 100,000 people with a GDP per capita of US$3711. Tonga and Vanuatu are at the top of a UN list of countries most vulnerable to natural disasters in the Pacific.

Related: Pacific climate change: temperatures rise, sea levels increase, rainfall changing