If Samoa had the global environmental impact of say the United States of America then there's hope yet for the future of small islands that face imminent extinction due to the impacts of climate change.

For a small island nation, Samoa was one of the first signatories to the Kyoto Protocol which served only as reminder of the fragile state the Pacific islands are in.

Kyoto was a milestone in itself; originally negotiated in 1997 the Protocol officially entered into force on February 16 2005 instigated by members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The objective of the Kyoto Protocol according to UNFCCC is to achieve "stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. "

Samoa signed Kyoto on the 16th of March 1998, and was accepted for ratification on the 27th of November 2000.

Currently 175 states have ratified the Protocol which includes Samoa, however only 35 have agreed to cap emissions.

The only existing data on gas emissions on Samoa is provided in the first national communication to the UNFCCC report in 1999.

According to the report, Samoas energy emissions were recorded at 0.43, while total population emissions were at 0.17 and 2.53 per person.

Samoa's per person emissions were higher then that of Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands and Nauru in the same year.

Since Samoa's agreement to ratify Kyoto, the local Climate Change division has been visible in creating awareness on the impacts of the global environmental challenge.

As our neighbours Tokelau and Tuvalu know all too well, Climate Change is a real issue, affecting real people and the possible existence of a nation, albeit a small one at that.

In a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Samoa is identified as a high risk area concerning the impacts of Climate Change.

"Because of their [islands] strong dependence on economic sectors that are highly sensitive to climate change effects, small island states clearly are a vulnerable group of countries."

However a report by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme states: "It must be emphasized, however, that the sensitivity of small islands to the projected effects of climate change cannot be attributed to any single factor such as size, elevation, remoteness, or to a select group of factors. Rather, the level of vulnerability of these islands is determined by the increasing and collective result of these and related biophysical attributes combined with the islands' economic and socio cultural characters. "