11 minute read
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.
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INTRODUCTION
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.
Photo: Aur Atoll, Northern Marshall Islands (H. Heine, 2020)
LIVED EXPERIENCE OF THOSE MOST AFFECTED
There is no climate justice for people from atoll nations if they are deprived of the ability to live off their land due to the climate crisis. Food and water sources, culture and traditions and livelihood of marginalised members of the population are threatened.
The lived experiences of governments and people of atoll nations is not adequately covered by the media, who frequently confuse projected and observed impacts of climate change and sea level rise, leaving the impression that there is some legitimate debate around the reality of the issue. Meanwhile those of us who live on atoll nations witness, on a daily basis, impacts of climate change on our islands including associated land loss: the erosion of our beautiful beaches, now lined with fallen coconut trees; ancestral graveyards where loved ones are laid to rest are regularly washed away during high tides.
Atoll nations have no rivers from which to draw necessary water for daily living. The frequent droughts brought on by climate change have created water security issues resulting from decreased rainfall and salt water intrusion into our water lenses. Agricultural activities such as vegetable gardening and growing of other food staples thus now present new challenges for families as well as for national atoll economies.
The health of our oceans, critical to our food security challenge as well as for the economic stability of our respective atoll countries, is in a state of crisis. With limited arable land, livelihoods in atoll countries centre on fish, clams and other shellfish. Increasing ocean salinity and rising ocean temperature are compromising the health, quality as well as quantity of fish and other marine life. In our communities we have seen the results: fewer and smaller fish stocks, meaning fishermen have to go farther away from the shorelines to catch the next meal for their families.
Photo: Ebeye Graveyard, Ebeye, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands (Thomson Reuters Foundation/Nicky Milne (2020)
The harsh living conditions exacerbated by extremely limited safe drinking water, and the inability to grow food or harvest fish and other marine life to sustain nutrition requirements for families will make life unbearable. Current experiences with national emergencies brought on by Zika virus, dengue and measles outbreaks are signposts of the health situation that is likely to face atoll residents. The subsistence economy and the reliance on the copra industry will be disrupted leaving no alternative source of income for community residents; similarly, plant materials, the basis of the handicraft industry, would become scarce, leaving this industry unsustainable.
Additionally, culture and traditions that have kept generations of islanders thriving are being threatened by climate change. For example, the concept of manjabpopo or preparedness in the Marshall Islands, is an inherent feature of island tradition in food harvesting and preparedness. The two primary seasons of añeneañ and ien rak are associated with breadfruit and pandanus harvesting seasons. Excess breadfruit during ien rak is processed into bwiro and kept underground to sustain families during the off season; similarly, excess pandanus fruit is dried to make jeenkun to supplement the family diet during the añeneañ season. Traditional food plants like breadfruit and pandanus are threatened by saltwater intrusion and therefore they bear fewer fruits leaving no excess fruit for manjabpopo, threatening families with food shortage and hunger.
In these atoll communities, climate change impacts have been the hardest on children and women. Children often stay home from school when there are limited food and water supplies; their health is often compromised by common insect-induced illnesses like dengue fever, zika, malaria, measles and other illnesses. Women are generally responsible for cooking, laundry and cleaning of homes as well as bathing of babies and young children. Extreme water situations place the burden on women to ensure there is adequate drinking and bathing water for the family; in some situations it means going the required distance to fetch water to meet family needs. Women as heads of households and in many cases the only breadwinner in families, struggle to meet family needs when plant materials which are the basis of the handicraft industry are ruined due to frequent drought. When there is a lack of food, women are likely to suffer nutritionally as they try to ensure there is adequate food on the table for other family members.
A SEAT AT THE TABLE
The UN and IPCCC regimes have championed efforts to bring about changes in practice by rich countries and have attempted to convince them to appreciate the dignity and human rights of everyone affected, regardless of how small and insignificant. The preamble of the Paris Agreement (2015) notes that all States ‘should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights’. Even with this clearly stated goal, human rights are often absent from climate-, environment- and disaster-related discussions and in UN and high-level leaders’ meetings. Further, though climate action has been scaled up globally, there is still a lack of understanding of the human rights and climate change nexus, particularly in the context of atoll nations.
Majuro (Capital City), Marshall Islands (ChewyLin Photo, 2020)
The hostile impacts of climate change are global, contemporary, and expected to accelerate, as outlined in the most recent IPCCC Special Reports on Oceans and the Cryosphere (2019) and 1.5 Degrees of Global Warming (2019). Other groups have worked in tandem with and alongside the IPCCC regime including countries represented in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) and the High Ambition Coalition. However, to date, the rich and powerful countries and corporations continue to control the narrative and, unfortunately, the final policy decisions. The lack of compliance with the Paris Agreement by some of these powerful countries is a statement in itself.
Leaders from low-lying atoll nations have appealed to the High Commissioner on Human Rights to consider their special case, particularly the human rights and climate change nexus and the natural and inalienable right for atoll people to stay on their islands. Ongoing discussions and proposal for a Human Rights Council Resolution in this regard is under consideration.
Meanwhile, most Pacific Rim powers have shown lack of leadership and are doing little to tackle the Pacific region’s key security issue, which is climate change, as reflected in the Pacific Island Forum Boe Declaration signed in Nauru in 2018. The U.S. has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement; Australia is the world’s largest coal exporter and plans to increase coal export; Japan is promoting coal-fired power; and China is the world’s largest coal producer.
In 2019 in Fiji, representatives from the five exclusively atoll nations came together, as members of the Coalition of Atoll Nations on Climate Change (CANCC), formed in 2014, to discuss the fact that their homes, cultures and livelihoods are at an increased risk as a result of the global climate crisis and that certain rights (such as the right to national boundaries, right to life, right to water and right to education) have been or are increasingly being compromised as a result of the climate crisis. These atoll nations also came together to identify concrete steps and strategies to collaborate and to identify solutions befitting their extraordinary and exceptional circumstances.
CLIMATE JUSTICE FOR ATOLL NATIONS
Leaders from these atoll nations have been at the forefront of the international climate crisis fight. They have successfully engaged in international diplomacy and, over time, have clearly articulated their issues, challenges and priorities to the world community. At the same time, they have continued to do what they can to shore up our resilience and our contribution to the global fight including via some of the world’s most aggressive renewable energy plans and emissions reduction efforts.
Up to this point, efforts in this climate change fight have centered on mitigation efforts. The case for adaptation has been recently brought to the forefront of discussions and the full understanding of the climate crisis has compelled leaders of atoll nations to come together to find common solutions. The meeting of atoll nations in Fiji identified the need for accelerated adaptation, through national adaptation plans, focusing on some basic agreed principles (2) including:
• Recognising the natural and inalienable right for atoll people to stay on their islands
• Adopting a scientific and knowledge-first approach
• Scaling up resilience as the fundamental focus
• Strengthening capacity to adapt
• Embracing innovation and traditional knowledge
• Recognising the place of security, well-being, identity, self-determination, human rights and survival
The suggestion that those impacted by the climate crisis, especially people from atoll nations, can simply pick up and migrate to another country highlights the mentality of those responsible for the environmentalism of the poor, (3) and the slow violence they have often experienced at the hand of colonialists and corporations. The loss to a people of their land, culture, language and way of life, is not valued by others or considered worthy of decent efforts. The world, and especially those polluting countries, needs to recognise the natural and inalienable rights of atoll people to stay on their islands. The fight is for the very survival of these people and their cultures. This issue is at the core of what climate justice means for them.
Meanwhile, as fallback plans, leaders and governments from some of the atoll nations have purchased lands in foreign countries for their people in the event the climate crisis made their islands uninhabitable. Others are looking at options to build up their islands in order to ensure that communities remain viable within their national sovereign boundaries. For the most part, the call for migration has been resisted by the majority of inhabitants from atoll nations. At best, it is an option that is available for those who may want to pursue that path.
LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND
The climate crisis is real and is a man-made phenomenon. It is created by the privileged, white global north. It can be unmade as long as rich and industrialised countries acknowledge their role in the crisis and stop building their economies on the backs of fossil fuels. They must recognise that those who contribute the least to the greenhouse gas emissions are the most disadvantaged and vulnerable across the world. Their rights to live peaceful existence on their lands, to practice their culture and lead meaningful livelihoods is seriously undermined and threatened by the effects of climate change to which they contributed little to nothing.
According to Mary Robinson, ‘putting people at the heart of the solution’ is what climate justice is about. The people of atoll nations, among the most vulnerable to the climate crisis are among the ‘people’ that must be at the heart of identified strategies and solutions. After all they will be the first ones to go if the crisis is not addressed.
(1) UN OHCHR (2020). “Climate change and the existential threat to human rights for citizens of Low-lying Atoll Nations.”
(2) Pacific Community, ‘Atoll nations unite against the exceptional and existential threat caused by climate change,’ (15 May 2019) https://www.spc.int/updates/blog/2019/05/atoll-nations-uniteagainst-the-exceptional-and-existential-threat-caused-by
(3) Nixon, R. “Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor. (2011) Denote actions toward impoverished communities, often assailed by coercion and bribery and directed against those people lacking resources who are often primary casualties of slow violence.
