clipped from: www.npr.org But no matter where you are in Fiji, the world's largest ocean is nearby. When currents and weather patterns change in the Pacific, Fijians say they feel it. Although rising ocean waters — on average only a few centimeters during the past century — may not be obvious, the effects of climate change are seen in other ways.
"Something is going on, and you can tell by the exposed roots of coconut trees," McGree says. "If you look at the real estate records, you can see in some areas there has been quite a bit of land loss."
"There are a lot of secondary impacts of climate change which will make the quality of life in the island Pacific very, very bad, as opposed to, say, very large land masses where people have a lot more freedom to move around," Koshi says. "And these are countries which are already challenged to the limit with non-climatic problems."