BARACK Obama has warned island nations are “canaries in the coalmine” of the climate crisis as he addressed the COP26 summit in Glasgow.
Speaking as the talks enter their second week, the former US president said not enough has been done to combat global warming and called for united action.
Obama, who arrived in Glasgow on Sunday night, said larger nations should shoulder more of the burden of fixing the climate crisis – as a theme of the talks on Monday is support for poorer countries to cope with the problem.
He said: “In many ways, islands are the canary in the coalmine in this situation.
“They are sending a message now that if we don’t act then it’s going to be too late.”
He added: “All of us have a part to play, all of us have work to do and all of us have sacrifices to make.
“Those of us who live in big, wealthy nations, those of us who helped to precipitate the problem, we have an added burden to make sure that we are working with and helping and assisting those who are less responsible and less able, but are more vulnerable to this oncoming crisis.”
READ MORE: When is Barack Obama speaking at COP26 and how to watch
A veteran of the failed UN climate summit in Copenhagen and the successful meeting in Paris which secured the world’s first comprehensive climate treaty, Obama was speaking at an event by COP26 organisers the UNFCCC on island resilience.
Calling for more action and for countries to stick to the pledges they have made in Glasgow and previously, he said: “It’s important for us to recognise as was true five years ago we have not done enough.”
The Hawaiian native said he is an “island kid” and ended his speech quoting a Hawaiian saying which he said roughly translates as “unite to move forward”.
Obama alluded to his successor as US president, Donald Trump, as he sought to convince people his country was genuine in its efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
He said: “The politics in the United States are not always easy, as you may have noticed, and my successor maybe wasn’t as interested in climate science as I was, it turned out.
“But there are a lot of people in the US government who care about this deeply and work really hard and are invested.”
Obama added that while “sometimes it may feel like the United States” is not following through on commitments or moving as fast as some people would like, it is “not for lack of trying” by delegates at COP26.
“It’s one of the things about democracy – it turns out you don’t always get your way,” he said. “But two cheers for democracy as they say. I think that was Mr Churchill who said that.”
He is expected to attend several events on Monday, including a speech laying out the progress made in the five years since the Paris Agreement took effect, highlighting the leadership of young people around the globe and urging more robust action from governments, the private sector, philanthropy and civil society.
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