Earlier this month, the president of the island nation of Kiribati bought a 20 square plot of land on the Fiji island of Vanua Levu, as an attempt to offer the country’s citizens a refuge from the impacts of climate change.
Kiribati, made up of 33 small islands, has a population of around 110 000. The rising sea levels have already effected the nation with coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion and loss of infrastructure.
This year one Kiribati citizen became the first ever to seek refugee status due to climate change. Although denied by the New Zeeland government, he will surely not be the last.
Fiji’s President Ratu Nailatikau regongnised their neighbouring nation’s plight.
”In a worst-case scenario and if all else fails, you will not be refugees. You will be able to migrate with dignity,” he said.
This gesture of solidarity is admirable, particularly or maybe because, Fiji will also face similar threats in the future.
Within a few decades, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns, small islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans could be extensively or completely submerged.
Who will show solidarity with them?
It is not only sea level rise that will cause people to flee their homes. Crop failure, food and water shortage and (as is often the result of unstable situations) increased conflict will see more people seeking refuge due to climate change.
For the people of Kiribati and other island nations the impacts of climate change is very real and tangible. They will have to leave their home, their land, their country, to become refugees, at best migrants. Never to return to again.
”It is already too late for us,” Anote Tong, the President of Kiribati told CNN. ”But hopefully, that experience will send a very strong message that we might be on the frontline today, but others will be on the frontline next.”
It is sad to see the unwillingness of the developed world to address, or even recognise these issues. International climate conferences, like the yearly UN Climate Change Conference, are still a blame game. No matter, it seems, how grim the facts the science community presents or how serious the impact on human and natural life, short sighted national interests prevail.
The effects of climate change, just as much as its causes, needs to be addressed with the gravity and immediacy that is required.
There need to be solutions rather than blame. Solidarity over pity egoism.
