If there was one thing that became very clear in the stories told by Pacific island representatives visiting Brisbane this week, it was the link between climate change and poverty.
Pelinise Alofa Pilitati,
Churches Education Directors’
Association Kiribati.
Photos by OxfamAus\Ronnie Wright
The stories told by people from different Pacific countries were very similar: where Pelenise Alofa Pilitati lives in Kiribati, water now seeps in under her house at high tide and collects in the front yard. That never used to happen. The local well, constructed only a few years ago to provide water for 300 houses from the undergrounds freshwater lense, is no longer drinkable due to salination. The coconut trees, which provide the only cash crop on the island, have no tops on them and no fruit. Taro, the traditional root crop which forms the basis of people’s diets, can no longer be grown. People are going hungry.
Pelenise is Chairperson of the Churches Education Directors Association in Kiribati (CEDAK) and campaigns tirelessly on behalf of Pacific island peoples affected by climate change.
Reverend Tafue Lusama.
Photos by OxfamAus\Ronnie Wright
Tiny Tuvalu threatened
Rev. Tafue Lusama of the tiny island nation of Tuvalu backed up Pelenise’s story with his own. Rev. Lusama is Chairperson of the Tuvalu Climate Action Network and a minister of the Christian Church of Tuvalu. The coconut trees are no longer bearing fruit, and the root crop, Pulaka, can no longer be grown. Fish stocks are depleted: the coral reefs are bleaching, and when they die, the fish which used to live in them move further away from the islands, making fishing very difficult. The protection provided to the island by the reef is no longer effective.
Tuvalu has become dependant on Australia and Asian countries for alternative foods, mainly rice. This is very expensive.
Tuvalu has an area of 26 square kilometers. We saw a photograph of the community hall with water up to the doorway and canoes in front. The hall was built in the centre of the island, where it is highest – i.e. approximately 4 m. above sea level. Access is now by boat.
Some scientists now predict that within thirty years Tuvalu will no longer be habitable.
“We live with fear”
Rev. Lusama is a quietly spoken campaigner, conveying a sense of great dignity in the midst of all the speaking engagements, in which he tells the same story over and over again. “We live with fear,” he said, recalling a cyclone which hit the neighbouring country of Niue in 2004, in which the wave surges managed to top the thirty-metre cliffs around the island.
Marstella Jack.
Photos by OxfamAus\Ronnie Wright
Going hungry in Paradise
A former Attorney General from the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Marstella Jack, put a figure of $1.3 million to the cost of delivering food – mainly rice, flour, sugar - to a country of 600 islands. Some deliveries take three months to arrive. In the meantime, people go hungry.
Climate change and development are linked not only through issues of poverty and hunger. All speakers underlined the growing threat of air-borne diseases such as Dengue Fever, as well as cholera.
How can it help for active Pacific leaders such as these to tour Australia telling the story? Publicity, the opportunity to lobby politicians, raising awareness – these are of course the most obvious answers, and every attempt is being made to maximize these outcomes. Yet it was a far less political or rational reason which the speakers offered: Australia is a close neighbour, they said. We are “family”, “community”. We have to look out for each other.
Ants and elephants
In this sense it was surprising that none of the speakers referred to Australia’s responsibility to curb its own emissions and resource consumption, though the question of effective targets was naturally raised. It seemed as if the speakers had either consciously decided to avoid pressing the guilt button or were much more interested in appealing for advocacy on behalf of their own countries. Marstella Jack, who has participated in many delegations to the UN as part of the representation of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), related how the island states felt like “ants” when faced with the “elephant” of UN bureaucracy.
Marstella recalled some of the hurdles faced by Pacific island states when appealing for international assistance. When they ask for technology transfer in order to develop their own systems of energy generation and adaptation to change, they are told that intellectual property rights stand in the way. Yet really, they suspect, it is the oil lobby that is behind the obstruction.
The problem with international aid
Another form of assistance requested by AOSIS is the separation of funding for climate change adaptation from Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) in the budgets of developed nations, since the latter is often swallowed by consultancy measures and other projects.
Australia’s PM criticized
Trish Harrup, climate campaigner with Greenpeace, criticized Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for the Australian Government’s lack of support of small island states at the UN, while saying that “the coal industry and big polluters” were “writing Australia’s climate change policy.” She reminded the audience of Rudd’s pre-election claim that climate change was “the greatest moral challenge of our generation.” Harrup urged Kevin Rudd to lend his support to the Pacific island nations at the Pacific Island Forum taking place the same week in Cairns.
Gravestones eroded
Listeners were reminded that as far back as 1992 Pacific island nations formulated a statement on climate change at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum. Personally I can recall viewing footage in the mid-nineties of gravestones tipping into the sea where a cemetery in a Pacific nation had been eroded. That image has stayed with me ever since. It seems the international audience is slow to comprehend. As Marstella strongly urged, it is high time for governments to work out a plan of action for the movements of people that will result from climate change. Simply reacting when it happens is the worst strategy to adopt.
Climate change in TSI
John (Toshi) Kris, Chairperson of the Torres Strait Regional Authority, pointed out that climate change is already an Australian phenomenon and is affecting the islands of TSI directly. He cited the same developments as the Pacific island representatives: changes to marine life and ecosystems, changes to seasonal weather patterns, new health issues, the degradation of the water supply. It is noticeable, he added, that there are fewer migrating birds now than in the past. They have nowhere to land. Fishing boats have to travel further out to catch enough fish, which becomes expensive in the light of fuel costs of $2.50 a litre.
John Kris outlined some of the many strategies being pursued by the TSI Regional Authority in an effort to find solutions themselves: working with local communities and with university research centres, undertaking land use planning and securing sections of coastline where possible. He underlined that the fate of the Torres Strait Islands was not simply a local affair – it was one which would “test Australia as a nation”.
Being boiled alive
Sam Rueben, Indigenous youth representative from TSI (living in Townsville), cited Al Gore’s analogy of the frog: if it is placed in boiling water it will do all it can to escape and survive. If placed in cold water that is slowly heated, the frog will stay there, not noticing the changes, and eventually perish. Sam pointed out that the effects of climate change on island peoples who had not caused it was a contravention not only of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples but also of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declares the “right to Life, Liberty and Security of Person” (Article 3).
The Federal Government, Rueben said, should set up a working group which assesses and costs the impacts of climate change in a holistic manner.
Brisbane Kiribati Australia
Association Dancer.
Photos by OxfamAus\Ronnie Wright
Identity and place
All of the speakers emphasized the intrinsic connections to place and culture which make up their island identities. Sam Rueben linked mental and physical well-being to cultural integrity and a sense of place. John Kris spoke of the strength of “island custom” in TSI and how hard it would be for people to leave their ancestral homes. When a baby is born, a coconut tree is planted where the umbilical cord is buried and gives that child an identity of place.
Planning for displacements
The CEO of Oxfam Australia, Andrew Hewett, did not mince words in formulating what he thought the Australian Government should do. A much more stringent emissions trading scheme is needed than is currently planned. The government needs to commit itself to supporting Pacific Island communities in adapting to climate change. Some funding has been allocated but it is nowhere near enough. And in terms of predictions of the movements of people (some estimates speak of 75 million people in Asia/Pacific by 2050), the government needs to talk to Pacific people now about what will happen and start some concrete planning.
Insecure status
On the issue of people movements, Rev. Lusama pointed out that displacement is not the same as migration. Displaced people cannot return. Voluntary migrants can. IT was also pointed out that under the UN Refugee Convention people displaced by climate change are not classed as refugees. Their status is not clarified and is thus very precarious. Three times Australia has already rejected the attempts of Tuvaluans to settle in this country after fleeing the effects of climate change.
The rising activism of youth on this issue, Andrew Hewett said, gives reason to take heart. And if the numbers in the Brisbane Room of City Hall in Brisbane are anything to go by, this is an issue that is of concern to many people. Credit is certainly due to Oxfam, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth for providing this unique opportunity to hear voices from the Pacific.
What should the churches do?
In conclusion I asked Rev. Lusama what Pacific Christians would like to see of churches in Australia. His response came without hesitation: “We are all together the Body of Christ. When one part of the body is hurting, the others act to heal it.” Speaking from a “justice perspective”, he said, we are called to act.
