LONDON, 6 January 2004 — It’s possible that Kiribati has failed to make much of an impression on many people. The most easterly island in the world, it reached its apotheosis in popular recognition at the start of this millennium, when wealthy travelers flocked there in order to see the first sun rise on a new century.
The chances are the island will fail to make any impression by 2100. For Kiribati (pronounced Kiri-bas) is one of a group of islands at risk of disappearing beneath the waves over the coming decades as a direct result of dramatic climate change — and the local people are facing a hard battle to have their concerns heard on a world stage.
Kiribati won’t be the first casualty of global warming. One islet, Tebua Tarawa, has already disappeared; another, Tepuka Savilivili, no longer has any coconut trees.
Tuvalu, the world’s second-smallest nation (after Nauru, which is also in the Pacific), consists of nine coral island atolls, the highest of which is only 12 feet above sea level at its peak. It’s not the sort of nation that can generate much of its own greenhouse gases, but its 10,500 inhabitants expect to be among the first to feel the effects of global warming. The coastal line is gradually being eroded by the sea, and the island has been hit by high tides that sweep away trees and roads.
But, the threat of the advancing sea isn’t just about being submerged. More immediately, the salt water is seeping into the soil, making it increasingly difficult for the islanders to grow crops. (Farmers have to use tin containers, filled with compost, instead.) In 2002, Tuvalu was hit by a record high tide, which covered much of the island and flooded its airport. The situation is deteriorating rapidly.
For the Tuvalun people, joining forces with similarly threatened people has certainly raised their profile, but their future security is far from being resolved. And despite their fears, most of those involved in their campaign are reluctant to move, although many worry that migration will be their only hope of survival.
“The object of the exercise of ‘sustainable development’ is to survive on the atolls forever... Sustainability is the idea that we can survive from day to day, and... ever after!” says Ieremia Tabai, a former president of Kiribati, and former chairman of the Association of Small Island States (Aosis).
So Aosis is lobbying the bigger states about the dangers that they — or we — pose to their continued existence. Simply, they want the developed world to slow global warming by reducing the production of carbon dioxide. The problem is that, as typically happens with the politics of small countries against large, nobody seems to be listening.
HE Teburoro Tito, the president of the Republic of Kiribati, says: “Some say that it is nonsense that we take today’s standard of living back to the past, just on behalf of the protection of the environment. But saving energy does not greatly affect your living standards. Is wasting energy and living in luxury a highly civilized life? Don’t you think that it is rather more civilized to think about the next generation, and the future of the earth, and to act accordingly?”
Fine words, but they have little impact in Washington, where, while the official White House position on climate change agrees with the scientists’ findings — that it is happening — the US government is intent on finding ways of reducing the “carbon intensity of its economy” outside of the Kyoto Protocol.
Whereas Archimedes was able to tell King Hieron “give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth”, small islands like those represented by Aosis have found themselves at the short end of the political leverage. They try; but there’s something weariness-inducing about the pages of earnest politicking issued by the Small Island Developing States Network (which is intertwined with the Aosis) — not least in the plans for the Mauritius convention “to discuss recommendations for further and successful implementation of the Barbados Program of Action”, or the Concept Paper for the Waste Management Experts Meeting in Havana, Cuba. Of course, these are important issues. But, when islands are sinking, it’s questionable whether this is the way to effect change. And will the delegates be traveling to those meetings by that carbon-dioxide generator, the aeroplane? Another problem is that even the politically devised systems we have in place to tackle climate change aren’t working.