Antigua and Barbuda will host Monday's conference of the Small Island Developing States. Both will be high on the agenda this week as Small Island Developing States (SIDS), as they're formally known, meet Monday at their fourth UN Conference, in the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda. And climate change -- with its brutal droughts, powerful hurricanes and rising seas -- is threatening to erase some of them from the map altogether. "The harsh truth is for these countries, climate change is already a reality," Achim Steiner, head of the UN Development Program (UNDP), told AFP. But most small island states are classified as middle-income countries or higher -- meaning that they're unable to access international aid and preferential financing available to the world's poorest countries.
