[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Paradise Lost

[Bill Totten]

Climate change forces South Sea islanders to seek sanctuary abroad

by Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent

Independent.co.uk (June 06 2008)


After years of fruitless appeals for decisive action on climate change,
the tiny South Pacific nation of Kiribati has concluded that it is
doomed. Yesterday its President, Anote Tong, used World Environment Day
to request international help to evacuate his country before it disappears.

Water supplies are being contaminated by the encroaching salt water, Mr
Tong said, and crops destroyed. Beachside communities have been moved
inland. But Kiribati - 33 coral atolls sprinkled across two million
square miles of ocean - has limited scope to adapt. Its highest land is
barely six feet above sea level.

Speaking in New Zealand, Mr Tong said i-Kiribati, as his countrymen are
known, had no option but to leave. "We may be beyond redemption", he
said. "We may be at the point of no return, where the emissions in the
atmosphere will carry on contributing to climate change, to produce a
sea level change so in time our small, low-lying islands will be submerged".

President Tong, a London School of Economics graduate, said emigration
needed to start immediately: "We don't want to believe this, and our
people don't want to believe this. It gives us a deep sense of
frustration. What do we do?"

Kiribati - a former British colony called the Gilbert Islands - is home
to 97,000 people, most of them squeezed into the densely populated main
atoll, Tarawa, a chain of islets surrounding a central lagoon. Along
with other low-lying Pacific island nations such as Tuvalu, the Marshall
Islands and Vanuatu, it is regarded as one of the places most vulnerable
to climate change.

Erosion, caused partly by flooding and storms, is a serious problem in
Kiribati, which straddles the Equator and International Dateline. Most
of the land is as flat as a table. "We have to find the next highest
spot", said Mr Tong. "At the moment there's only the coconut trees". But
even the coconut trees are dying - casualties of an unprecedented
drought. The country has had next to no rain for the past three years
and meanwhile the freshwater table is being poisoned.

Mr Tong was in New Zealand - which was chosen to host the UN's World
Environment Day after committing itself to becoming carbon neutral - for
talks with Helen Clark, the Prime Minister, whom he hopes to persuade to
resettle many of his people. But he also appealed to other countries to
help relocate i-Kiribati.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said
of Kiribati's plight: "It's a humbling prospect when a nation has to
begin talking about its own demise, not because of some inevitable
natural disaster ... but because of what we are doing on this planet".
The world must find the "collective purpose" to combat climate change,
Mr Steiner said. "Unless everyone ... on this planet takes their
responsibility seriously, we will simply not make a difference".

New Zealand already has a substantial population of Pacific Islanders,
but absorbing another 97,000 would strain its generosity. Besides, that
is just Kiribati. A report by Australian government scientists in 2006
warned of a flood of environmental refugees across the Asia-Pacific
region. New Zealand is already experiencing significantly increased
levels of migration from affected countries.

President Tong said he was accustomed to hearing national leaders argue
that measures to combat climate change would jeopardise their economic
development. But he pointed out that for Kiribati "it's not an issue of
economic growth, it's an issue of human survival". And while scientists
were still debating the degree to which the seas were rising, and the
cause of it, he said, the changes were obvious in his country. "I am not
a scientist, but what I know is that things are happening we did not
experience in the past ... Every second week, when we get the high
tides, there's always reports of erosion". Villages that had occupied
the same spot for up to a century had had to be relocated. "We're doing
it now ... it's that urgent", he said. "Where they have been living over
the past few decades is no longer there. It is being eroded."

The worst case scenario suggested that Kiribati would become
uninhabitable within fifty to sixty years, Mr Tong said. "I've appealed
to the international community that we need to address this challenge.
It's a challenge for the whole global community."

Leading industrialised nations pledged last month to cut their carbon
emissions by half by 2050. But they stopped short of setting firm
targets for 2020, which many scientists argue is crucial if the planet
is to be saved. For Kiribati, it may already be too late.

Copyright (c) independent.co.uk

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/paradise-lost-climate-change-forces-south-sea-islanders-to-seek-sanctuary-abroad-841409.html


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