San Francisco Frontiers - Snorkel with me to understand climate change, Palau president tells Trump

"I think it's good if we go snorkelling and look at things," Surangel Whipps Jr said.

"The cost of not doing anything about it (climate change), it's going to be even worse... we need to look at it in those terms," he added.

"I hope I can talk to President Trump on the finance side."

Palau is an archipelago of some 340 islands east of the Philippines, and is extremely vulnerable to rising seas, with Whipps acknowledging some of his country's atolls could be lost in coming years.

But he warned "the threat is there for all of us," and urged Trump to "think about his children and his children's children".

Trump has called climate change a scam, pulled Washington out of the key Paris Agreement for a second time, and ended US participation in leading climate initiatives and research.

"Everybody seems to be looking inwardly at their own pocketbooks, at their own people, at what's best for them. But even the United States has a lot of low-lying areas," Whipps said.

- 'China is actually doing more' -

The Melanesian microstate of some 20,000 people is a steadfast US supporter in a region where China has made inroads, but it has also felt the impact of Trump slashing international aid, with some ocean monitoring programmes now on hold.

Whipps warned that the US retreat risked ceding ground to China on the world stage.

"If Trump is concerned about leadership, this is where he's going to lose serious ground," he told AFP in Tokyo on the sidelines of an ocean summit.

"China is actually doing more for climate change these days than probably the US."

The Baltimore-born leader was reelected last year after a first term that saw the swift expansion of US military interests across the Palauan archipelago.

His country is one of the few to maintain diplomatic links with Taiwan despite China's retaliation, including an unofficial ban on its nationals visiting tourism-dependent Palau.

"They continue to pressure us in different ways," Whipps said, insisting that would not sway Palau's policy.

"All we want is the status quo, we want to maintain peace."

Palau gained independence in 1994 but allows the US military to use its territory under a longstanding "Compact of Free Association" agreement.

In return, the United States gives Palau hundreds of millions of dollars in budgetary support and assumes responsibility for its national defence.

- 'Destroying your future' -

Palau has broken with some of its Pacific neighbours in urging a moratorium on deep-sea mining, and is trying to build consensus in the region ahead of a meeting that could finally set rules for mining in international waters.

"The science and the data are not there yet" on the potential impacts, said Whipps.

Scientists have warned scraping vast sections of the Pacific Ocean for metals such as nickel and cobalt -- used in electric car batteries -- could devastate poorly understood marine systems that play a crucial role in regulating the climate.

But several low-lying Pacific nations including Nauru, Tonga and the Cook Islands see deep-sea mining as a potential moneymaker for their struggling economies, particularly as climate change disrupts other industries.

Whipps said that was short-term thinking.

"You may think you're saving your people now, but you're really destroying their future," he warned.

Climate-vulnerable nations like Palau have long sounded the alarm on global warming, with pleas for a quicker transition away from fossil fuels like coal, and calls for money to support countries most affected by climate disaster.

"When it was Covid everybody just mobilised because we're going to die, now. Climate change is like the slow death," he said.

"President Trump is now 78, he should also be thinking about his children and his children's children. And I think when you put in that perspective then it's easy."

L.Nguyen--SFF