Vanishing homeland of Kiribati leaves people with nowhere to go – ‘Climate change is the greatest moral challenge of the 21st century’
By Linda Uan
12 February 2013
(WA Today) – On an average day in Kiribati we can look out across our calm and peaceful lagoons and see people fishing and going about their daily business and everything is at it has been for many generations. But this is deceptive. We now know that we are being subjected to a gradual, creeping and insidious process: climate change. This directly threatens the future of our homeland – our people will be scattered, and the survival of our unique culture, lifestyle and even our language, may be lost forever. It was only in the 1990s our community began to hear about rising sea levels due to climate change. Back in 1999, we assumed that we would all be climbing coconut trees to escape the rising tides which would inundate our tiny islands – but we now know it is not as simple as that. On average our islands are only two or three metres above sea level and are often less than 800 metres across at the widest point. Early advice was that we should move away from the coast, but as the President, Anote Tong, has noted: ”There is nowhere to move back to – you’ll either be in the lagoon or the ocean.” What we experience are more frequent storms which attack our coastal defences and erode our precious land and crops. Whole communities have had to be relocated. Changing climate patterns have also brought extensive periods of drought, which threaten our scarce fresh water supply. The fragile water lenses beneath each of our islands are very vulnerable to salt water intrusion. This happens when our coasts are eroded by storms, when rising sea levels intrude from beneath and when drought causes shrinkage of the lenses. On top of this we now have problems with overpopulation on South Tarawa and human-induced pollution of our water resource. Without fresh water, there can be no life. This, along with sea level rise, is the major threat to our existence. We became more intimately involved with the issue when our AusAID-supported video unit assisted the government with its presentation at the COP 15 conference in Copenhagen in 2009. At that time our President said: ”Climate change is the greatest moral challenge of the 21st century. It calls into question the ability of our international institutions, and our compassion as human beings, to face this issue. We cannot handle this alone.” [more]
