TThe Pacific nation of Kiribati may be surrounded by water, but on land, its residents are running out of water as the surrounding sea steadily encroaches, contaminating underground wells and leaching salt into the soil.
“Our oceans are being polluted,” says climate activist and law student Christine Tekanene. “Affected people cannot survive on the changed waters after sea levels rise.”
The freshwater crisis is just one of many threats posed by rising sea levels in Kiribati. The people of Kiribati live on a series of atolls that sit just a few meters above the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean. As global temperatures rise and ice sheets melt, Kiribati and low-lying countries like it are experiencing extreme and frequent flooding, increased coastal erosion, and persistent food and water insecurity.
This week, the UN General Assembly is holding a high-level meeting to address the existential threat posed by rising sea levels, and the issue has moved up the international agenda. Last year, the UN Security Council First discussed.
Wednesday's meeting aims to forge a political agreement on actions to address the far-reaching social, economic and legal impacts of rising sea levels.
Samoa's UN representative, Dr Fatumanava Paolelei Lutelu, said the upcoming UN conference was long overdue and “very important” for the island nation.
“We are not economically or militarily powerful,” said Luttel, who also serves as the current chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). “We have the potential and the opportunity, at least within the UN and the multilateral system, to address and achieve some of our priorities.”
“We're still fighting.”
Rising sea levels raise a number of hot-button issues, not the least of which is whether low-lying countries and their governments should begin preparing to relocate their people. While some countries, such as Tuvalu, have accepted the possibility and are lobbying for international recognition of their sovereignty if their islands disappear, others seem more cautious. Ten years ago, Kiribati bought land in Fiji as a refuge for its people, but the government has since rethought that strategy.
Photo: Atmotu Images/Alamy
Ambassador Luttel said many small island states are unwilling to compromise on their future and “don't use the words 'existential threat'” to describe the threat climate change poses to their countries.
“People have made it very clear that they don't want to relocate,” he said.
Meanwhile, Tekanene says many Pacific Islanders “feel uncomfortable” when asked about their disappearing land. “We're still fighting, we're not drowning,” she says.
But some experts say world leaders must urgently face the reality that the homes of millions of people who live on small islands and coastal communities are disappearing.
Dr Benjamin Strauss, CEO and chief scientist at Climate Central, warns that the worst effects of sea level rise can be delayed, but not reversed.
“The long-term sea-level rise that we are already predicting will almost certainly submerge many of the Pacific atolls,” he says. “Eventually, the rate and amount of sea-level rise will make many islands untenable.”
Kamal Amakraneh of the World Centre for Climate Mobility, which has been helping prepare the high-level meeting for the UN General Assembly, stresses that while people have a “right to remain” in their homes, it is equally important to ensure that those who are forcibly displaced have safe and dignified options.
“The international community and regional organisations should realise the climate transition pathway,” Amakran told the Guardian in an email.
Creating these migration routes and developing solutions to protect islands so people can settle there will require big funding from wealthy countries. Kiribati has raised billions of dollars from foreign donors to raise the islands and protect them from the worst effects of rising seas. Strauss says it will take “unimaginable, very heroic geoengineering” to help island nations withstand the effects of rising seas.
“Many of the atoll nations don't have significant resources,” Strauss said, “so it's unclear how much they will be able to invest and how much the world will decide to invest.”
In Kiribati, the situation is expected to worsen. Recent NASA evaluation The study projects that sea levels in the country could rise by up to 50 centimeters by 2050, regardless of whether global emissions are reduced by then. If the worst-case predictions come true, some of the country's islands could become uninhabitable, if not disappear entirely, by the end of the century.
In the face of such looming catastrophe, activists like Tekanene are calling on world leaders to do more to protect their country.
“We want developed countries to take responsibility for past emissions that contributed to this crisis,” she says.
“They can help prevent that … they can do that more than we can.”
