Foreign minister of Marshall Islands Tony de Brum revealed a macabre effect of climate change, after a recent incident exposed the graves of World War 2 soldiers in the Marshall Islands.
De Brum reported during a UN climate discussion held in Bonn that the high tides exposed a grave containing at least 26 bodies of Japanese soldiers.
"These last spring tides in February to April this year have caused not just inundation and flooding of communities but have also undermined regular land, so that even the dead are affected," de Brum said, speaking on the sidelines of the UN climate negotiations, as reported by BBC.
He also said that some of the coffins and bodies were washed away. They concluded that these Japanese soldiers committed mass suicide, since there was no evidence of broken bones or any indication of war.
During World War 2, the Japanese inhabited the Marshall Islands before the US soldiers drove them away.
Now, the biggest challenge faced by the islands is combatting the adverse effects of climate change. The island's high point was just two meters above the water, making it one of the most vulnerable places in the world to climate change.
There were 70,000 people living in these islands, but the sea level rise threatened to make them homeless as it causes their roads to erode. Salt brought by the high tides also made their land infertile.
In a recent report released by the UN Environment Program, sea level rise in the Pacific, particularly around the Marshall Islands, recorded a higher rate than anywhere else in the world. Between 1993 and 2009, the sea level rise was recorded to be 12mm per year, compared to the world's average of 3.2 mm.
In his report, de Brum convinced other ministers who attended the talks to commit and act on the issue of decreasing carbon emissions.
