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Honolulu Star Bulletin (Hawaii)
Sunday, August 19,
2001
Tuvalu:
Global-warming’s first casualty
By Eun Jung Cahill Che
Special to the Star-Bulletin
IT'S TOO LATE for Tuvalu,
a small island nation in the Pacific.
Ten thousand people, Tuvalu's entire population, are packing
their bags as their homes among nine low-level atolls are being
swallowed by the rising sea. These are the facts of life:
the earth is warming, the sea levels are rising, and Tuvalu
is quietly being erased from the surface of the earth.
Leo Falcam, president
of the Federated States of Micronesia,
cautioned in a recent conference here that the Pacific Islanders'
"early experience with real consequences of global warming
has been considered analogous to the canary in the coal
mine-providing an early warning to the global community
of its own impending doom."
The Tuvalu islands
are only the first casualties of climate
change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts
a 50 centimeters to 1 meter rise in sea levels over the next
century. A rise of 1m would put under water 17.5 percent of
Bangladesh, 6 percent of the Netherlands, and 80 percent of
Atoll Majuro of the Marshall Islands, according to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Low-lying coastal zones of developed countries could
also be seriously effected. The panel is authoritative
group of 1,000 experts and this is the overwhelming
majority opinion.
Rising sea-levels are
only part of the problem. The 1.4
to 5.8 degrees Celsius rise in temperature over the next
century will increase flooding, the intensity of storms,
and droughts in Asia and Africa and will change the
distribution of rainfall.
The disappearance of
Tuvalu introduces other questions.
What will become of its territorial waters? What happens
when more of these islands disappear, displacing 7 million
people? What are the economic and security implications
of disappearing exclusive economic zones? Can there be
compensation for the loss of a country, its history,
its culture, its way of life? How do could a price
be put on that? Who will pay it?
While developed nations
quibble over details of the
Kyoto Protocol, Tuvalu islanders are literally losing
their homeland. To the United States and other developed
nations, the dispute over the Kyoto agreement is a
question of fairness. They focus on apportioning the
burden of responding to the threat. Developed nations
argue that developing nations like India and China will
become the leading creators of greenhouse gasses in a
decade or two. For U.S. negotiators, any framework that
doesn't take this development into account is unfair.
For the Pacific Islanders,
fairness is irrelevant.
Climate change is not a future concern; it is an
immediate threat. A diaspora has begun. The Tuvaluan
people must build new lives in a new land. Australia
and New Zealand have begun to take in refugees,
who must adjust to the cultures surrounding them.
After having lived in relative isolation, difficulties
are inevitable.
Tuvalu is a small,
homogeneous nation. Its population
is 96 percent Polynesian and 97 percent belong to the
Church of Tuvalu. There are no mobile phones, one radio
station, and one internet service provider. There are
no regular military forces as the country is so small
that it did not expect to defend its territory.
The Tuvaluans want
to preserve their past. The collective
memory of a small society will be cleaved as its people
are forced to take refuge in separate lands. That memory
will be all that the Tuvaluans will have left of their
homeland. Their burial grounds, schools, homes, churches
are being enveloped by the ocean. The Tuvaluans can never
go home again.
The world should ensure
that Tuvalu is the only casualty.
Climate change and sea-level rise should force all nations
to face up to their complicity in destroying cultures and
accept responsibility for ensuring the safekeeping of a
people. The U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees should
set up a fund for those losing their homes. There should
be programs to support the settlement and cultural adaptation
of the refugees.
Amid the clamoring
for international consensus on protocols
and pacts, the industrial world should heed President Falcam
contention that "climate change is nothing less than a form
of slow death."
Eun Jung Cahill Che
is a research associate at
the Pacific Forum, a think tank in Honolulu.
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