A change of tact: From Pacific Person
of the Year to Pacific Issue of the Year
F or the first time since we began this December tradition of bringing you our Pacific Person of the Year, we have opted for something different.
Concerned with the impacts of climate change and particularly how they will affect the islands, and terrified at the thought of losing our homes, our livelihoods, even our very lives, Islands Business magazine has declared Climate Change as its 2008 Pacific Issue of the Year.
This comes as the Pacific travels to Europe this month for negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
The islands—through the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP)—have also declared 2009 as the Pacific Year of Climate Change.
So will we still have our homes in 50 years’ time?
Science cannot say. But what scientists do know is that the earth is getting warmer and because of that, the sea level is rising.
As recent as the 2007 Climate Change synthesis report, the United Nations’ Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change had this to say: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level,” adding:
“Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.”
That is why at a United Nations Security Council hearing on climate change recently, Tuvalu’s representative spoke of the end of the Cold War, and the beginning of the “Warming War.”
The saying that no country is an island is coming true almost literally. And as we have proposed in our lead story, the Pacific has not only met its Waterloo in the form of climate change, but the structure of the phrase seems to reflect too the possible means of our demise, for it’s the rising seas that would—with all probability—flush us out of existence.
Of course, for saying that we are not claiming to be the first. Way back in 1987—over 21 years ago—Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, then President of the Maldives, spoke of the death of his island nation unless developed nations reduce their carbon emissions.
Needless to say, our Pacific Issue of the Year is no call for celebration. Nor a cause to champion. It is rather a lament about us, our culture, our islands, our home.
In the world of mega profits, lavish living and atom splitting technologies, we the inhabitants of the Ocean are insignificant and inconsequential.
We are not awash with oil fields. Neither do we claim to carry the world’s solutions to all its problems.
All we ask is the chance to live on with our simple, uncluttered lives.
It is certainly our hope that come December 2058, our children will still be able to open the same family mailbox to collect their own hardcopy of the magazine, instead of googling a national archive database to see what life was like half a century ago in a region that was once called the islands of the Pacific.
Kiribati - the sea is encouring and threatening
WAGING A ‘WARMING WAR’
Have the islands met their Waterloo in Climate Change?
Samisoni Pareti
Whoever coined the phrase ‘to meet one’s Waterloo’ could not have been thinking about the fate of the 22 countries and territories that make the world’s largest oceans their home.
Surely, the very existence of three million people living in 600,000 square kilometres of sand and soil amidst 30 million square kilometres of water would not have been in the mind of the creator of the phrase.
But just as General Bonaparte Napoleon of France met his defeat at that battle with the English and the Prussians in the tiny Belgium village of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, a watery grave seems to be the destiny of many of our islands.
For Anote Tong, the Pacific has already met its Waterloo in the form of climate change and its associated phenomenon of sea level rise.
As president of Kiribati, the effects of an encroaching ocean on the country’s 33 atolls and islets are real, and scary.
“How can we remain the nation of Kiribati when we are living [say] in Australia?” Tong told an American documentary producer recently.
“What is our citizenship?
“Do we still have our sovereignty when we are no longer living in Kiribati?”
Tong have been asking questions that no one really knows the answers.
As well, he and leaders of equally small atoll countries do not need to sight bulky scientific reports to tell them what will become of their home if the bigger and wealthier countries of the world do not drastically cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
They see the impact of such gases in their backyards and their frontyards too, every day.
“Here, in Tuvalu, we don’t need to refer to reports because we see the evidence with our own eyes,” Saufatu Sopoanga told a visiting journalist when he was prime minister of his country in 2003.
This same journalist wrote of an islet she visited on Funafuti Harbour.
“When three cyclones ripped through Fiji and Tonga in 1997, a 124-acre motu in the Funafuti atoll was washed away.
“On my visit across the lagoon to see what is left, I find only a dome of petrified coral cement—the basement, as it were, for the sandy beaches and palm trees that once comprised a favourite Funafuti picnic site.”
In Majuro, capital of Marshall Islands, residents like those on Funafuti, lament the loss of an atoll to sea erosion.
What was once luxuriant vegetation and a long sandy beach is now sheer rock.
Carteret Atoll was virtually unknown until news broke this year that the atoll’s population would have to be relocated to neighbouring Bougainville in Papua New Guinea.
Seawater is eating their tiny islets away, contaminating their food gardens and poisoning their freshwater wells.
“We no longer can plant bananas and we have nothing on our fruit trees. We are now feeding on coconuts and fish,” said a Carteret woman.
“The same is true for Ontong Java, a string of sandy atolls to Carteret’s east.
Though neighbours, the atolls of Ontong Java form the northernmost border of Solomon Islands.
The national government in Honiara is currently in negotiation with the atoll inhabitants for their relocation to the larger island of Malaita.
Relocation, according to Rence Sore, Solomon Islands’ permanent secretary for the environment, would not be forced.
“Relocation is not easy for Ontong Java,” Sore told journalists who covered the Pacific climate change round-table in Samoa last October.
“They have been living next to the sea all their lives, eating fish and coconuts, so we can’t just take them out and relocate them somewhere inland in Malaita.
“We are still talking to them on how best we can do this.”
He said salt water intrusion had devastated taro swamps on Ontong Java.
When the people of Tegua village on Vanuatu’s northernmost province of Torba were relocated 15 metres from the coast in 2005, some media reports labelled them as the Pacific’s first group of environmental refugees.
“We are seeing king tides across the region flooding the islands,” climate change adaptation officer for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP) Taito Nakalevu told Islands Business.
“These are normal events, but it is the frequency that is abnormal and a threat to livelihoods.”
Espen Ronneberg is the climate change adviser at SPREP headquarters in Samoa.
When he was adviser to the government of the Marshall Islands, he warned of dire consequences of climate change on the island nation.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established by the United Nations (in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation) as the authoritative intergovernmental body, concluded in 1990 that continued accumulation of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, described by scientists as “radiative forcing”, was likely to lead to measurable climate change—namely a sea-level rise of 3-10 cm per decade, or 20 cm by the year 2020,” wrote Ronneberg.
“This implies undoubtedly the inundation of the Marshall Islands, Tokelau, Kiribati, Tuvalu and other low lying atolls of the Pacific region,” he added.
Indeed the list of cases of how climate change is disrupting the lives of the people in the Pacific is long, and growing.
From Betio in Tarawa to Vunisinu outside Suva, from Weteili in Carteret to Luamotu in Funafuti, the sea is encroaching and threatening.
And things will only get worse, not better, as the IPCC has not changed its assessment.
Summarising the latest IPCC’s report on climate change to a group of regional journalists recently, Ronneberg said the scientists’ assessment for small islands of the Pacific is bleak.
“Global climate change is “very likely” to have a human cause,” said Ronneberg.
“Temperatures were probably going to increase by 1.8—4C (3.2—7.2F) by the end of the century.
“Sea levels were most likely to rise by 18—49cm, and global warming was likely to influence the intensity of tropical storms.”
Because of this, SPREP’s climate change expert expects anecdotal evidence on the impact of climate change in the Pacific to continue to grow.
“Coral bleaching will lead to declines in total tuna stocks and migration away from current routes.
“Sea-level rise exacerbates inundation, storm surge erosion, and coastal hazards, threatening infrastructure, settlements, and facilities like international airports.
“The intensity of tropical cyclones will increase, giving rise to significant damage to food crops and infrastructure.
“Our current high health burdens will worsen by climate sensitive diseases through morbidity/mortality from extreme weather events, vector borne diseases, food and water borne diseases.”
Tuvalu - could undoubtedly be inundated by 2020, according to IPCC
So what can be done?
Ronneberg and other experts on climate change around the world have identified a two-prong strategy.
It is what has been proposed as mitigation and adaptation measures, in that you watch and change your lifestyle in order to reduce carbon emissions, and at the same time introduce measures that will cushion the impact of such emissions on the environment.
Islands of the Pacific through SPREP had done this through a convention it calls the Pacific Islands Framework for Action on Climate Change 2006—2015.
Under such a framework, SPREP members like Samoa, for instance, have implemented a series of measures that included:
• Planting mangroves to protect the coastline;
• Building seawalls only where necessary;
• Managing water resources;
• Protecting natural resources such as reefs and forests;
• Better urban management and planning; and
• Designing and placement of infrastructure.
Kiribati, however, is proposing a third option to mitigation and adaptation of climate change.
President Tong wants relocation to be recognised as an option for some atoll nations like his.
His calls for the formulation of an international treaty that recognises the rights and privileges of environmental refugees. But this has yet to gain greater support.
Yet on this front, the London School of Economics graduate seems to have had a supporter in IPCC.
Professor Patrick Nunn, an oceanic geoscience scientist with the University of the South Pacific, told the Pacific climate change round-table in Apia in October that relocation will have to happen.
“Understandably, no one likes to be told to leave a place where his ancestors had lived.
“But the people of the Pacific must realise that some parts of the Pacific won’t be habitable in the coming years due to sea level rise.
“Disruption associated with relocation can be reduced by early, anticipatory action,” added Professor Nunn.
For Pacific islanders, relocation is not only a cultural issue, but one of economics as well.
Told about IPCC's prediction that his town will permanently be underwater in 20 years time and that the entire town centre will have to relocate, administrator of Fiji’s Nadi town, Robin Ali retorted: “Well, may be we should talk about that, but who is going to pay?”
International watchdog Oxfam knows the answer to that question.
“It’s a widely accepted ethical principle, understood from the playgrounds to courtrooms around the world.
“If you harm others, you have two obligations: stop harming them or help them cope with the damage done,” Oxfam wrote in its adapting to climate change paper of 2007.
“Rich countries have certainly harmed others with many decades of excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
“The impacts of climate change are already putting at risk the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific who are least responsible for causing it and least equipped to cope with it. They inevitably face higher risks in the future because of delayed warming still to come from greenhouses that have already been emitted.
“Until global emissions are drastically cut, those risks will continue to rise fast.
“The ethical obligations upon rich countries to stop harming and start helping are extraordinarily clear,” the Oxfam report said.
