Ghana has made a strong case to developed and worst-polluter countries to support climate-vulnerable Pacific island countries, whose vulnerability has been disproportionate to their contribution to global pollution.

“The world is facing seismic changes, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Pacific Island countries,” President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said at a forum of regional leaders in Tonga, in an address delivered for him by Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey.

“The devastating effects of climate change can be clearly seen in your beautiful islands,” President Akufo-Addo said at the 53rd Pacific Islands Leaders Forum held in Nuku’alofa, the island capital of Tonga.

The phrase “seismic changes” and similar imagery invoked by speakers, among them UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez, took on a vivid meaning when an earthquake measuring 6.9 shook Nuku’alofa, sending participants scrambling out of the main indoor stadium where the opening ceremonies had taken place with heavy overhead fixtures swinging wildly.

However, neither fatalities nor damage was reported.

President Akufo-Addo said as Chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), he was “acutely aware that it is past time now for the international community to step up and play its part.”

Ghana is Chair of the CVF, which brings together 68 of the countries most highly-threatened by climate change in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific.

He asked developed countries to take comprehensive action to address the systemic vulnerabilities of Pasifiki – Tongan for Pacific.

With rising sea levels as a result of global warming, several islands face an existential threat. For instance, none of Kiribati’s 33 far-flung islands stands higher than four meters above sea level, which makes the lives of its 131,000 citizens one of daily apprehension.