Vanishing beneath the waves
A Pacific island perspective
Taito Nakalevu,
Apia, Samoa
The sea has been part of Pacific islanders’ life since the begin- Heta, with the ocean rising above the 30 metre cliffs, leaving
ning of time. It has influenced the way they build, plan and two people dead and 20 per cent of the population homeless.
carry out daily activities. It has also been an agent of chaos
and change. Pacific islanders are now used to seeing islets van- Early in the morning of April 16 this year, six families from the
ish beneath the waves after cyclones or other extreme events. settlements of Tekavatoetoe on Funafuti in Tuvalu were evacu-
The greater worry at present for most Pacific nations is whether ated from their homes after severe flooding from unusually high
extreme events will increase in the future. swells. Radio Tuvalu says the families were moved to the Tuvalu
Red Cross with the assistance of the Disaster Management, the
Pacific Island countries are some of the most vulnerable com- Police and the Red Cross. One of the woman rescued from her
munities in the world and are already experiencing the effects home told Radio Tuvalu that the first huge wave came around
of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 4 o’clock on Monday morning. It swept most of their belong-
Change, which represents the consensus of 2,000 scientists, ings out into the sea.
talks about a rise in sea level up to a metre or possibly higher,
depending on the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice Many international environmental activists argue that Tuvaluans
sheets over the next 50 to 100 years. This is worrying particu- and others in a similar predicament should be treated like refu-
larly for low-lying atoll islands like Tuvalu, Kiribati and other gees and given immigration rights and other refugee benefits. This
Pacific islands. Many of the islands are not more than a few tiny nation was among the first on the globe to sound the alarm,
metres above water, so a sea-level increase of as little as half a trekking from forum to forum to try to get the world to listen. New
metre would completely inundate some of those island States Zealand did agree to take 75 Tuvaluans a year as part of its Pacific
and threaten their populations. Access Category, an agreement made in 2001. But Tuvalu is not
alone in the Pacific with its worries. Other states, such as Kiribati,
The problem with sea-level rise is that it would exacerbate are also confronted with rising sea level problems.
storm surge, erosion and other coastal hazards, threatening
vital infrastructure, settlements, and facilities that support the Some theorize that sea level rise and storm surges would simply
livelihood of island communities. Prior to 1985, the Cook Is- “rearrange”, but not obliterate, an atoll island like Tuvalu. Rear-
lands had been considered to be outside the main cyclone belt rangement would be bad enough for people in Pacific nations
and could expect a major twister every 20 years or so. But all because any new land tenure issue would compound the already
that has changed. In 2005, in one month alone, five cyclones complex land tenure systems currently plaguing many Pacific na-
swept the Cook Island waters, three of which were classified at tions. In fact, it could lead to a new security issue for the islands
Category 5 intensity. In 2004, Niue had been hit by Cyclone as some people may benefit while others lose out completely.
226 GLOBAL OUTLOOK FOR ICE AND SNOW