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CLIMATE JUSTICE: A CASE FOR ATOLL NATIONS HILDA C. HEINE Senator Hilda C. Heine was the first Marshallese woman to be chosen as President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, in 2016, and served in that capacity until January 2020. She was also reelected in 2019 to her third term as Member of Parliament (Nitijela). Senator Heine is a crusader for women’s rights and currently serves as an advisor to the Women United Together Marshall Islands (WUTMI), a non-governmental organizational that she co-founded with other Marshallese women leaders in 1987. WUTMI strengthens the voices of Marshall Islands women by promoting human rights and good governance, the Marshallese culture, and women’s empowerment in the economic and political spaces.
INTRODUCTION
‘Climate change threatens the full and effective enjoyment of a range of human rights, including the right to life, water, and sanitation, food, health, housing, self-determination, development, culture and sovereignty. The detrimental impacts of climate change are disproportionately borne by persons and communities in disadvantaged situations, owing to geography, poverty, gender, age, disability and ethnic background.’1 The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), comprising 16 Pacific Island states and territories, declared in its 2018 Boe Declaration that climate change is the single greatest threat to the livelihood, security and wellbeing of Pacific people. While the climate crisis impacts all vulnerable people and communities globally, most nations have higher ground that offers the possibility of retreat from rising sea levels, unlike people and communities from exclusively low-lying atoll nations. This article focuses on climate justice for people and communities from the five exclusively low-lying island or atoll nations in the world: the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Kiribati, Tuvalu and Tokelau in the Pacific Ocean and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. These atoll nations are just above sea level, heavily dependent on traditional ecosystems for subsistence, and are on the frontline of the climate crisis. Atoll nations are formed from the remains of extinct seamounts of volcanoes, which have eroded or subsided partially beneath the water. The land that remains above water is typically low-lying and narrow, leaving it extremely vulnerable to sea level rise, cyclones and tsunamis. While there are many countries with atolls, there are only five exclusively made up of these geological features.
