All vulnerable: The tyranny of distance and the Ring of Fire
The Pacific Islands are one of the regions of the world most likely to be affected by climate change. This is due to a number of factors including their small size, their remoteness (the so-called “tyranny of distance”), their geological structure (coral islands often barely above sea level) and their location on the fault lines of tectonic plates, making them prone to earthquakes and tsunamis (The famous Pacific Ring of Fire reaches all the way to the Americas, Japan and right down to New Zealand). Adding to the problem, their resources are often managed in a way that is unsustainable and nearly all are in a situation similar to, or scarcely less enviable than, Tuvalu or the Solomon Islands. There are others under threat also.
Kiribati is 87 metres above sea-level at its highest point, but many of its islands are coral reefs covered by between two and three metres of sand, without rivers or any other source of drinking water. Worse still, some of the Kiribati Islands, and Banaba in particular, have become even more fragile by phosphate mining by the British Phosphate Commission, while in the Lines Islands nuclear testing by the United Kingdom and the United States during the colonial period has had serious effects. Tarawa Island (population 70,000) has the same problems as Tuvalu even though it is larger. To illustrate the issue, a recent report by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP)* confirmed that two uninhabited Kiribati islets, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared forever beneath the waves in 1999.
The Marshall Islands include the coastlines of 19 eroded atolls. To protect them, as with Kiribati, the local population is resorting to desperate measures including depositing all kinds of heavy and bulky objects to serve as sea defences. These include trucks, old cars and other machinery that they then cover with stones to make a barrier.
To better illustrate the problem, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati already have their first ecological refugees on the small raised island of Niue.
Papua New Guinea has rivers as wide as the Amazon, despite flowing over relatively short distances. On 19 September 1994 an explosion of several cones of the Rabaul Volcano largely destroyed the town that bears its name. Now some of the neighbouring islands are also threatened with disappearance. This is particularly true of the Carteret Islands (with a population of around 2,000) where the locals are constantly rebuilding protective dykes and desperately trying to get the mangroves to grow. Now the decision has been taken to organise their relocation in small groups to the Bougainville Islands, four hours away sailing.
Nauru, once extremely rich due to the phosphate mines, has been devastated and rendered fragile by 50 years of over-exploitation of minerals that are now exhausted.
* Set up in 1974 by the South Pacific Commission, the SPREP has the mission of helping the region’s countries to protect the environment and to practice sustainable development.
Pacific Islands. Climate change and vulnerability
Tuvalu, a worldwide symbol
Living in constant fear of climate change
A dynamic civil society
Tsunami on the Solomon Islands
All vulnerable: The tyranny of distance and the Ring of Fire
Pacific Islands face up to global warming
EU and ACP countries seek “adaptation strategies”
