A huge dome is built over a crater left by one of the US' nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands Photo: VCG

Pacific island countries are not only direct victims of climate change, but have become the dumping ground of various forms of waste or a testing ground for nuclear weapons by developed countries in past decades, leaving tragic and dangerous consequence for local ecology, and even to the survival of people.

Starting from the 1940s, the South Pacific region has been the worst- affected area by nuclear pollution. The US carried out 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, which caused irreparable damage to inhabitants' health and the ecological environment, according to Hua Chunying, China's foreign ministry spokesperson.

The US has dumped nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean, causing a large increase in cancer rates, leukemia and birth defects in newborns, and other illnesses among those living in the Marshall Islands.

The plutonium-239 and -240 concentrations in soil samples taken at the Bikini Atolls islands are 1,000 times higher than samples from Chernobyl or Fukushima, said Hua.

Six decades have passed, and American warships and test personnel have left lasting trauma and pain on the vast stretch of the Pacific Ocean.

However, the harm is never-ending. The Japanese government officially decided to dump nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea in April 2021. 

"The amount, duration, and scope of affected areas and the risk level are unprecedented. Here I would like to raise three questions for the Japanese side to answer," said Zhao Lijian, China's spokesperson for the foreign ministry on a press conference in April 2021. "The oceans are not Japan's trash can; and the Pacific Ocean is not Japan's sewer. Japan should not expect the world to pay the bill for its treatment of wastewater," he said.