Kiribati: Land of the rising sea
On the front line of climate change, the people of the Pacific Islands are desperately looking for higher ground. Adam Morton reports from Kiribati. 
When a coconut tree dies the decay starts at the top. The leaves fall, then the fruit. All that is left is a desiccated trunk, cut off at half-mast. In areas flooded with seawater, dead palms resemble tidal gauges, the high water mark visible on their stranded remains. They’re plentiful in Tebunginako, a tiny village on an outer island of the Pacific republic of Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas). Over 40 years the villagers have seen the sea rise, storm surges become more frequent and spring tides more forceful. The erosion was so great that the village was abandoned. What’s left of a hundred thatched homes and a community meeting hall, or maneabe, sits 30 metres offshore. ”The contamination of the groundwater started in the late ’70s, and after that erosion started and houses started to fall into the sea,” recalls Aata Maroieta, 64, the village chief. ”The force of erosion was stronger than the sea walls, and eventually the Government said ‘all you can do is relocate’.” … Like the coast, the food supply is in retreat. The freshwater milkfish that once fed the village are long gone, and plant life is dying from the salt. Taro – a starchy vegetable that grows in groundwater pits more than 200 metres from the coast – is killed by king tides. Each year villagers need to head further inland to find fresh food and water, but Kiribati’s 33 coral atolls and islands are skinny and average a height above sea level of only two metres. Inland goes back only so far. ”It is very difficult to find food these days,” Maroieta says. ”It makes us feel sad that there is nothing left of our village. This is the place of our ancestors and we feel threatened and vulnerable.” … On the ground many villagers have little or no understanding of climate change, but say they know they are witnessing a shift – not only increasingly intrusive seas, but stronger, less predictable winds and more intense heat. ”The average i-Kiribati certainly thinks it’s getting hotter,” says Emil Shutz, a former government minister who now runs tours for the country’s few recreational visitors. ”Ten years ago they could fish all day in a tinnie, but not any more – it is just too hot.” …
