By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON, June 4 (Reuters) - Mina Susana Setra and Nnimmo Bassey are keenly interested in this week's U.S. Senate climate change debate because they say they already live with deadly consequences of global warming.

"Now is the time that the United States has to lead," said Setra, an indigenous woman from the Dayak Pompakng community in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. "Many countries still look to U.S. positions, so whether we like it or not, that is the fact."

"The Congress, whether it's making a major shift or not, it's an important step because it brings up the issue and people have an opportunity to analyze and critically make their inputs and also hold decision-makers accountable," said Bassey, a human rights and environmental activist from Nigeria.

Setra and Bassey were in Washington on Tuesday as Senate debate began on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would set up a cap-and-trade system to curb emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide.

It is not expected to pass, but if it does, President George W. Bush has threatened a veto. However, supporters of limiting greenhouse gases see the proposed act as an important marker for moving the conversation on climate change forward; this is the first piece of U.S. legislation on the issue that has even come up for debate on the Senate floor.

The United States is alone among major industrialized nations in rejecting the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol, and the Senate bill's emissions targets are more modest than Kyoto's.

To Setra, the Capitol Hill debate does not reflect the immediacy of the problem she sees in rural Indonesia, where increased world demand for biofuels -- promoted as a clean alternative to petroleum -- has exacerbated the effects of global warming.

'DIE TODAY'

In Indonesia, close to 14 million acres (6 million hectares) of forest have been converted to oil palm plantations, which furnish a renewable biofuel, Setra said, which has been disastrous for indigenous people who depend on forests for clean water, food and medicine.

"They're talking about saving the world like in the next 10 years, 20 years, but in some places in Indonesia, like in my community, they can just die today," she told reporters.

The loss of forest has meant more floods. And since last year, she said, there is a new problem: grasshoppers that can destroy a rice crop in minutes.

"It's because palm oil, because the forest is gone and the weather in the place is getting more hot and the grasshopper, it's the best place for them to get in," she said, citing a research institute study.

In Nigeria, the threats of increased desertification and rising sea levels -- both spurred by climate change -- are squeezing the population, Bassey said.

"The desert is marching from the north, the sea is rising in the south, we are being compressed and we are just suffering very serious and direct threats," he said.

One of Bassey's worst worries involves projected decreases in African agricultural production. By 2020, he said Africa could lose 50 percent of agricultural production capacity; by 2080, he said, it could face an 80 percent loss.

Climate change has also made Nigeria a more hospitable place for the mosquitoes that carry malaria, a major killer of children, he said.

"Any action that can be taken in any part of the world and especially the United States helps to send a signal ... This is an interconnected world," Bassey said, referring to the debate in the U.S. Congress.

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