Coping with climate change
March 30, 2010
The Carteret Islands and the Maldives are two examples of islands whose societies have already been devastated as a result of climate change. Global warming has led to social dislocations in other islands states and coastal regions too.
The 12,000-strong South Pacific island state of Tuvalu has also seen social upheaval. Tuvalu consists of nine islands and become independent in 1978. The Funafuti Atoll, where most people live, is located just above sea level - the highest point of the 2.5 square kilometer island is just five meters above the high-tide mark.
Residents are now trying to emigrate to New Zealand and Australia. Both countries have rejected attempts by Tuvalu's government to press Canberra and Wellington to grant asylum to its climate refugees.
It's a similar situation in Kiribati, which lost an uninhabited coral island to the sea in 1999. The 32 atolls of the South Pacific island state lie scattered over 3.5 million square kilometers of the ocean. The president of Kiribati has sworn Australia and New Zealand and other countries to accept his 110,000 citizens as refugees in case of an emergency.
Emigration and relocation are also big issues on the Solomon Islands in the Southwest Pacific. The islands are no strangers to natural disasters. In 2003, floods devastated the island of Tikopia, though its 2,000 residents managed to flee to safety. In 2007, a tsunami which triggered an earthquake killed more than 40 people and made 5,000 homeless.
The island of Fiji, a paradise for tourists, has also been frequently hit by floods. The island state is considered to be at grave risk in the long run because of rising sea levels. The same goes for the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Samoa and Tonga in the South Pacific.
Bangladesh in South Asia has also suffered huge damages due to climate change. Half a million people have lost their homes since 2005 when Bhola, the country's largest island, was flooded. The majority of the displaced have moved to slums in the capital Dhaka. It's estimated that the country's entire population of 150 million could be on the run from rising sea levels by the end of this century.
Author: Torsten Schaefer (sp)
Editor: Mark Mattox