The Atlantis Effect

IF YOU STILL don’t believe that global warming is a reality and that one impact is rising ocean levels, you should listen to the people of the Pacific islands. Here are the introductory words of the Otin Taai declaration, produced by the Pacific Churches’ Consultation on Climate Change in 2004 after it met on the small island state of Kiribati (pronounced Keer-ree-bahss):



“Here on the small island atoll of Kiribati, the impacts of human-induced climate change are already visible. The sea level is rising. People’s homes are vulnerable to the increasingly high tides and storm surges. Shores are eroding and the coral reefs are becoming bleached. The water supplies and soil fertility are being threatened by the intrusion of salt water. Weather patterns are less predictable, posing risks to fisher-folk and farmers.”





Undeniable fact





Participants gathered in Kiribati because ocean encroachment has become increasingly evident to its population. From the air, the islands are thin strips of land on a vast canvas of blue. Twenty minutes west by car of the capital Tarawa, at a cemetery in Betio, relatives of deceased are disinterring loved ones and moving them inland because the sea is disturbing graves. A rusted field gun left over from World War II’s Battle of Tarawa, in which US Marines seized the island from the Japanese in 1943, is being touched by waves for the first time. “Even at high tide, that gun used to be 15 or 20 meters from the shore,” says a local man. A mother who lives in the area with a young daughter says, “sometimes when I sleep, I dream of the big wave swamping everything, and I awaken so frightened that I can sleep no more”.



Two of Kiribati’s uninhabited islands have already been claimed by the rising sea level. Yet, if the days of Kiribati are numbered, it won’t come as a single engulfing wave. Over a period of decades, the islands of Kiribati will have been rendered uninhabitable by flooding, salination of drinking water, and ruined agricultural land. And if Kiribati is doomed, its inhabitants need an escape plan.





Preparing to relocate





In June 2008, Kiribati’s President, Anote Tong Beretitenti, asked New Zealand and Australia to consider the issue of environmental refugees from his nation. “We may already be at the point of no return, where the emissions in the atmosphere will carry on contributing to climate change, so in time our small low-lying islands will be submerged,” Mr Tong said on a visit to Wellington in New Zealand. Kiribati’s highest point of land is just two metres above sea level, and under worst-case scenarios it will be flooded by the Pacific this century, and its 94,000 people will have to be re-settled in other countries. Mr Tong told a press conference marking World Environment Day, which Wellington hosted for the United Nations, that changes were already obvious in his country. “I am not a scientist, but things are happening we did not experience in the past,” he said. “Villages that have been there over the decades, maybe a century, now have to be relocated” due to erosion of the land. He quipped that, “the next highest spot on Kiribati is the coconut trees”.



Then travelling to Canberra in Australia, Mr Tong pointed out that the people of Kiribati don’t want to leave as homeless climate refugees being a burden to their new host countries. He pleaded to neighbouring countries to provide Kiribati people with training to become skilled migrants. He also complained about the attitude of big industrial nations, such as the United States and China, which argue at international meetings that measures to combat climate change would hurt their countries’ economic development. “For us, it’s not an issue of economic growth, it’s an issue of human survival” he argues.



Wolfgang Scherer, director of the National Tidal Facility in Australia, which for 10 years has managed the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project, agrees that the people of Kiribati have run out of options. “Of course the people should be worried,” he says. “How would you like to live on an island where most people live within two meters of mean sea level? I’d worry if I was them, no question about it.”





A common threat





Kiribati is not alone in facing this threat. Among the Pacific island states, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands are also at risk of vanishing within decades if sea levels keep rising. Tuvalu has secured New Zealand’s agreement to accept an annual quota of its citizens as refugees. Scientists say that sea level has been rising by one to two milimetres a year for the past century, and that the rate of rise will accelerate during the next century. According to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there is no doubt the rise will continue, but what is less certain is by how much, how fast and where. It may be too late to save Kiribati and the other most vulnerable states. According to tidal researcher Scherer, “You could cut off all CO2 outputs, and sea levels will continue to rise for a century or more because the oceans respond slowly to atmospheric change”.



Drastic measures have already been underway to conserve low lying communities as a result of the rise in human-made emissions to the atmosphere. In 2005, a small community living in the Pacific island chain of Vanuatu became one of the first to be formally moved out of harm’s way as a result of climate change. The villagers were relocated higher into the interior of Tegua, one of the chain’s northern most provinces, after their coastal homes were repeatedly swamped by storm surges and aggressive waves linked with climate change.





A matter of justice





Climate change is a justice issue for the Pacific peoples. An unforseen consequence of the widespread burning of fossil fuels to fuel industrial development since the 18th century has been the thickening of a blanket of infrared-absorbing gases in the atmosphere. These trap heat and warm the Earth. As the air heats up, sea levels rise, partly because seawater expands as it warms. The Pacific island states produce a tiny fraction of the world’s output of greenhouse gases, and yet they will face the full brunt of climate change impacts. No wonder they are dismayed at the selfish attitude of the big carbon emitters. Kiribati’s leaders have explained to the United Nations that, “for countries such as Kiribati, global warming and sea level rise are critical security

issues, and we have and will continue to call on the international community to agree on a unified global response to these phenomena”.



The worst fear of the people of Kiribati is that they might lose their identity. “We have so many unique things – the way we dress, the way we eat, the way we speak,” says a woman in Tarawa. “I don’t believe we will disappear soon” she adds, but as more people move away we will lose our identity, and then Kiribati will be nothing, and we will never be known again in the history of the world”. Several projects are underway to document the unique culture and vibrant society of Kiribati, and facilitate assimilation for the Kiribati citizens in new countries. But there is a profound sadness about the prospective loss of native land. “To plan for the day when you no longer have a country is indeed painful” says President Tong, “but I think we have to do that”.





Church Climate work





The World Council of Churches climate change campaign continues today. In the Pacific it includes representatives of the Pacific Conference of Churches from Kiribati, Nauru, French Polynesia, Niue, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, and the Cook Islands. These islands together have a population of around seven million people. The signatories to the Otin Taai declaration are following through on their promises to engage Christian Churches internationally in education and action on the issue. In Britain, for example, there is Church involvement in the Up In Smoke Coalition, which is lobbying for reduced carbon emissions and more assistance to the worst affected countries. Operation Noah is a new ecumenical Church campaign which produces study materials on the issue.





Key proposal



In 2005 Caritas Oceania presented guidelines on Environmental Justice to Caritas Internationalis, the international confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social service organisations. Its key proposal was that Climate Change become a major focus of environmental justice activity within the Confederation. Caritas Oceania said it was motivated by the encroachment of sea water on their scarce land resources. “Climate change threatens the sustainable use of the land, the water resources of our planet, and the very existence of some countries” their document reported. They wanted planning “for new forms of development which take into account both the climate and the sharing of resources”. The President of Kiribati is on record as saying that the impact of global warming on polar bears often gets more world attention than the fate of his people.