As the world tries to hammer out a future plan to tackle climate change, tiny islands say it is too late - their homes and histories are disappearing under the rising sea.
Dressed in traditional grass and rattan skirts, the islanders used music, song and slide shows to tell their story to a tearful audience in a luxury hotel on the Indonesian Island of Bali. For nations and communities that sit only a few metres above sea level, even small ocean rises engulf their land and send destructive salty water into their food supply, leaving residents with little choice but to flee.
"Relocation for us is our only means of building our future. We will lose our identity, but we have no choice, the islands are shrinking," said Ursula Rakova, from the low-lying Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea.
"Do we leave our children so they float in the sea, or do we help them now?"
Climate experts say that as global warming heats the Earth up, glaciers and polar ice caps will melt and sea waters will expand, sending oceans rising by at least 18 centimetres (7.2 inches) by 2100.
World sea levels rose 3.1 millimetres (0.12 inch) per year from 1993 to 2003, the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said. Representatives from the Carteret Islands, the Pacific nation of Kiribati, and islands in Australia's Torres Strait have brought their story to a UN climate conference being held here in Bali.
"For us as Kiribati people, the land is very important," said Tangaroa Arobati, a global warming activist from Kiribati, where about 92,500 people live on 33 coral atolls, which sit, about two or three metres above sea level.
"A very important thing is to have land and women. It gives us our future generation, and our land, this is our heritage."
As sea levels have crept higher, the coasts have eroded, corals have been bleached, and islanders' staple foods such as the giant Babai taro, coconut and banana are unable to grow in salty soil. Drinking water is being contaminated with seawater, while extreme weather events beat coastlines, and fish are no longer abundant.
On the Carterets, where one island has been split in two by the encroaching sea, Rakova said hunger and desperation were sending the young men to mainland Papua New Guinea, or spiralling into depression.
"The young men of Carteret relieve their pain by getting drunk," she said.
Nearly 190 nations have gathered at the UN Bali meeting, which aims to see nations agree to negotiate a new regime to combat climate change when the current phase of Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. But activists say new targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would do little to held some Pacific islanders.
"They talk about climate change as if it is something that might happen in the distant future, something that might happen in 2020 or 2050 or even in 2100," said Tony Mohr, of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
"However vibrant cultures and communities of the Pacific are already experiencing climate change." Islanders are urging the world to do all it can to reduce greenhouse gases and stop history repeating itself on other small islands.
They also want financial help from rich nations and practical assistance for the islanders, who will likely soon join a growing number of climate refugees.
"If this continues, maybe we will be left with three coconuts. We may be clinging to a very small piece of land. Where is our future?" said Kiribati's Arobati.
Comments
Comments are closed.