And not a drop to drink: The South Pacific’s water crisis
SYDNEY, October 6 (The Economist) – ONE canary in the climate-change coalmine may have just quietly fallen from her perch. The tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu has declared a state of emergency after a fresh water shortage forced it to shutter its schools and hospitals and begin water rationing across the country. Observers blame the shortage on the changing weather patterns and rising sea levels associated with climate change—and warn they could be a sign of things to come for the whole region. Freshwater supplies had already been running dangerously low for the 11,000 people who live on Tuvalu. The drought caused by nearly a year of sparse rainfall has been made worse rising sea levels, which have contaminated the low-lying country’s underground aquifers with salt water. The crisis is not confined to Tuvalu, which has long lamented that climate change was threatening to turn it into a modern-day Atlantis. Neighbouring Tokelau, a protectorate of New Zealand, also declared a state of emergency this week, after its water supply dwindled to the point where it was completely reliant on an emergency seven-day supply of bottled water shipped in from independent Samoa. That prompted the America’s navy to dispatch a cutter loaded with 136,000 litres of bottled water from its bases in American Samoa. Climate scientists have linked the episode to a weather event known as La Niña, which has brought with it a punishing drought. Families who already rely almost solely on rainwater have been rationed to two buckets per day. The Red Cross and the New Zealand Defence Force have flown in water and desalination machines, but even so the government warns that Tuvalu has less than five days’ drinking water left. Even worse: nearby Samoa, which has a population 15 times that of Tuvalu and Tokelau combined, has begun to ration water in parts of its territory for the same reasons. The freshwater crisis racking the region, which The Red Cross calls “dire, with rain not expected for the next couple of months”, shows no signs of abating and every indication of spreading throughout the region’s fragile eco-system. “Climate change is certainly a headline issue for the Pacific region and for a lot of the smaller Pacific island countries,” said a worker at the Australian Red Cross who was not authorised to comment. “Tuvalu is probably the front line, alongside the Maldives.” In fact there is probably no country is closer to the firing line in the war against global climate change than Tuvalu—which is not to say that it stands much chance of firing back. As an archipelago whose highest elevation is a meagre 4.5 metres, Tuvalu feels it when the sea level climbs by an average of 5.77mm annually. The whole country, a cluster of white sandy beaches as far as can be from the rest of the planet, is expected to disappear entirely within the next 50 years. That fate portends ominously not just for Tuvalu, but also for every other low-lying coastal area, from the Maldives to Manhattan. Australia has turned down Tuvalu’s request for an emergency migration programme that would resettle the islanders. Even a €90m ($119m) aid package to tackle regional climate change pledged earlier this year by the European Union has done little to tamp down its fears. The leaders of countries as far afield as Barbados and Grenada joined Tuvalu in raising the alarm over the issue in a series of impassioned speeches to the United Nations General Assembly last month. Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, laid the blame for the current debacle squarely at the feet of developed economies. He was “baffled” he said, “by the intransigence of major emitters and developed nations that refuse to shoulder the burden for arresting climate changes that are linked to the excesses of their own wasteful policies.” As it happens, the first states to experience the effects of climate change as an existential threat are among the world’s smallest, most isolated and least powerful. […]
