Initiative sheds light on plight of drowning island states

As world leaders from wealthy nations acknowledge the ‘existential threat’ of climate change, Tuvaluan Prime Minister Kausea Natano is racing to save his tiny island nation from drowning by raising it 4-5m above sea level. the sea through land reclamation.

As experts issue warnings of the Marshall Islands’ potential uninhabitability, President David Kabua must reconcile the inequity of a sea wall built to protect a house that is now flooding another next door.

This is the reality of climate change: some people talk about it from afar, while others have to live with it on a daily basis.

Natano and Kabua tried to show this reality on Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Together they launched the Rising Nations Initiative, a global partnership to preserve the sovereignty, heritage and rights of Pacific atoll island nations whose very existence is threatened by climate change.

Natano described how rising sea levels have affected everything from the soil his people rely on to plant crops, to homes, roads and power lines that are being washed away.

MISSING NATIONS

The cost of living eventually becomes too much to bear, causing families to leave and the nation itself to demise, he said.

“This is how a Pacific atoll dies,” Natano said. “This is how our islands will cease to exist.”

The Rising Nations initiative seeks a political declaration by the international community to preserve the sovereignty and rights of Pacific atoll island countries; creating a comprehensive program to build and fund adaptation and resilience projects to help local communities sustain their livelihoods; a living repository of the unique culture and heritage of each Pacific Atoll Island country; and support to acquire UNESCO World Heritage designation.

The initiative has already gained support from countries like the United States, Germany, South Korea and Canada, all of which have recognized the unique burden that island nations like Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands have to bear.

A report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in February highlighted the vulnerability of small island developing states and other global hotspots such as Africa and South Asia, whose populations are 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather conditions compared to less vulnerable regions of the world. .

If warming exceeds a few tenths of a degree Celsius more, it could make some areas — including some small islands — uninhabitable, said report co-author Adelle Thomas of Climate Analytics and the University of the Bahamas.

NOT IN DEFAULT

On Wednesday, Natano said Tuvalu and its Pacific neighbors “have done nothing to cause climate change”, with their contribution to carbon emissions amounting to less than 0.03% of the global total.

“This is the first time in history that the collective action of many nations has rendered several sovereign countries uninhabitable,” he said.

Representatives of other nations who attended Wednesday’s event did not deflect responsibility.

However, it remains to be seen whether they will do enough to turn things around.

Several have pledged money to help island nations pay for early warning systems and upgrade their buildings to better protect them from hurricanes and other weather.

However, less has been said about mitigating the problem of climate change and more about how to adapt to the devastation it has already wrought.

“We see this train coming, and it’s coming down the track, and we have to get out of the way,” said the International Organization for Migration’s deputy director general, Amy Pope.

German Secretary of State and Special Envoy for International Climate Action Jennifer Morgan, who also attended Wednesday’s event, spoke about her country’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045.

However, while Germany remains committed to phasing out coal as an energy source by 2030, it has had to reactivate coal-fired power plants to weather the coming winter amid energy shortages resulting from the Russia’s war in Ukraine.

MORE EFFORT

For the president of the Marshall Islands, rich nations could do much more.

During his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Kabua urged world leaders to tackle sectors that depend on fossil fuels, including aviation and shipping.

He highlighted the Marshall Islands’ carbon tax proposal for international shipping which he said “will drive the transition to zero-emission shipping, channeling resources from polluters to the most vulnerable.”