‘We are very vulnerable’: cyclone-hit Vanuatu pins climate hopes on UN vote

A boy walks through through the ruins of his family home in Port Vila, Vanuatu after Cyclone Pam devastated the town in 2015. The Pacific country has co-sponsored a resolution on climate obligations at the UN. Photograph: Getty Images

Last month, twin cyclones tore through Port Vila, the capital of the Pacific nation of Vanuatu. The category-four storms left corrugated iron roofs crumpled like leftover wrapping paper, flooded the streets with waste-ridden mud, cut residents off from water and electricity for several days, and sent many fleeing to hastily established evacuation centres.

Devastation of this sort is becoming more common throughout the Pacific, where rising sea levels are leaving shorelines increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather made more intense by climate change.