Climate refugees in political pass-the-parcel

By Megan Rowling

LONDON (Reuters) - The islanders of Tuvalu could lose their homes and much of their land in the coming decades. But the world has yet to figure out how it will deal with them, and millions of others, who may be displaced by climate change.

"It's a game of political pass-the-parcel," said Andrew Simms, policy director at British think-tank New Economics Foundation. "No one wants to be left holding the problem of climate refugees."

It's a problem with immediate resonance in the nine tiny Pacific islands that make up Tuvalu.

The group of atolls and reefs is on average barely two meters above sea-level. The United Nations climate panel estimates that oceans will rise by 18-59 cms by 2100.

This, along with environmental degradation, could make large parts of Tuvalu uninhabitable.

Japanese activist and journalist Shuichi Endo has set himself the daunting task of photographing 10,000 Tuvaluans -- nearly the entire population -- in a bid to draw political attention to the threat they face from global warming.

"If industrialized countries like Japan and the United States don't cut their greenhouse gas emissions, the Tuvaluans won't be able to carry on living here," Endo said by telephone from Nukulaelae island, as children laughed in the background.

"Their culture will be lost, the Tuvaluans will no longer exist, and that would be very sad. Here, people live in tune with the natural environment. They don't emit carbon, and we can learn a lot from them," Endo said.