Scenes From
an Island Nation Facing Its Own Demise
By Amelia Holowaty Krales
Nov 6 2011
Tuvalu,
the island nation in the South Pacific, will be uninhabitable within 50 years
because of climate change. How are its 11,000 inhabitants dealing with the
rising seas?
Amelia Holowaty Krales
A flooded
pathway links the road to an enclave of houses in the northern borrow pits of
Fongafale, the main islet of Tuvalu’s capitol. This area, and others like it,
were coined ‘borrow or burrow pits’ because rock, soil and coral were excavated
from these sites to help build Funafuti’s runway during WWII. The pits are
small pools and are prone to flooding. This site floods almost daily and
residents have to deal with surges from the ocean side as well.
TUVALU
-- A 40 minute boat ride across the lagoon from Funafuti's capital islet, there
is a beautiful beach circling the islet of Tebuka.
The shore is crisscrossed with tall trunks of downed coconut trees, their roots
exposed. The day I navigated the debris along the beach, it was dramatic how
erosion had uprooted hundreds of trees.
Tuvalu
is a string of nine small islands in the middle of the South Pacific, about
halfway between Australia and Hawaii. About 11,000 people live on the atolls'
collective ten square miles. The global scientific community predicts that
Tuvalu will be uninhabitable within 50 years because of climate change.
Climate
change is most visible in Tuvalu during the King Tide, a season characterized
by the strongest and highest tides of the year, during the new and full moon of
February. During these tides, the water bubbles up through
the porous ground and pools across the low-lying islands, causing flooding
throughout the country. Before the mid-90s, flooding was never as
pervasive, even at the peak of the King Tide. But recently, alterations in
traditional seasonal weather patterns -- most notably, alternating drought and
extreme weather events -- have caused flooding to become a serious annual
problem.
During
the King Tide, childhood development educator Teimana
Avanitele showed me around her flooded backyard and
garden. Her backyard is deluged constantly during high tide, not just in
February. The Avanitele family home is located on
what used to be swampland, filled in by American soldiers during WWII when the
local runway was built. The flooding creates septic problems, and many times
has destroyed Avanitele's vegetable garden, forcing
her to construct raised beds above the reach of the water.
I
saw flooding throughout the capital island of Funafuti, where I lived for ten
months, working on a photographic documentary investigating how climate change
has affected everyday life in Tuvalu.
I
spoke with parents about their hopes for their children, young people about
their future plans, fishermen and farmers about changes in their catches and
crops. Elders in the community shared their observations about changes they
have seen in the land and weather patterns.
"The
weather, climate ... are not stable like before,"
observed Ioane Malologa,
64. "One time, I am living along the seashore, my house is there and the
wave came up, right up to the house. And even ... buildings built with concrete
were washed down or damaged by that big wave." Malologa,
along with 11 other dancers, singers, and musicians, will represent Tuvalu in
"Water is Rising," a show now touring the
United States, raising awareness about the issues facing Tuvalu. "I have
already advised my children. I got four daughters and one only son. ... They've
been well educated, and now they all got jobs in the government. Well that'd be
okay for their life at the moment but ... I have advised them -- it is better
to migrate."
This
sentiment is not held by all. Though encouraging his children to migrate, Malologa himself wants to stay in Tuvalu. While most Tuvaluans
have family living abroad, largely in New Zealand and Fiji, many people I met
there wanted to stay in Tuvalu as long as possible. But in a country where land
is precious and scarce, coastal erosion, flooding, and increasingly severe
weather patterns, eking out a living here is now difficult.
Family
is of primary importance in Tuvalu, and when asked about his family's future
and the possibility of migration because of climate change or other forces,
Funafuti resident Pesega Lifuka,
responded, "People have to survive, right? They have to change; they have
to find resources for survival. That is what you can see - [in] my family, I
really invest in education. Maybe that is the only land that we have. It is
through knowledge then we can survive. Hopefully, if there is a change in
Tuvalu I think that it is better to have this."
He
continued, "As a Tuvaluan or maybe as a Pacific Islander, there is an old
saying: where you grow up that is your identity."
Though
Tuvalu and other low laying atolls are some of the first countries to
experience these issues at this scale, they are a canary in the mine. All
countries will begin to experience the effects of climate change if measures
aren't taken to lower emissions, and real attempts taken to slow the effects
already taking place.