Tuvalu, a sinking island paradise

ENVIRONMENT

TUVALU looks majestic like paradise on a thin strip of sand densely covered with coconut palms, and surrounded by shallow emerald waters. However, taking a closer look reveals its vulnerability and the fragility of the land itself. Beside the runway, golden sand spills on to the concrete, and scraggly green grass struggles to survive.
The horizon is flat, and dominated by sea; sea that presses at you from every side. The air – ripe, over-cooked – pushes people into the dark interiors of their homes in the middle of the day, sticky and cloying.
How many of these island paradise homes will still be in existence in 50 years or fewer years from now? Will they still be here or would they have been drowned due to sea level rise?
Sea level rises due to global warming. Global warming melts glaciers and ice sheets at the poles and mountain peaks adding more water into the oceans. The other reason for the rise in sea levels is due to the warming up of sea water temperatures. The volume of the ocean expands as the water warms up.
The sea level rise in Papua New Guinea measured by satellite altimeters since 1993 is about 7mm per year. On average, Port Moresby experiences six tropical cyclones per decade with most occurring between November and April.
However, the sea level rise is not uniform around the globe. Some land masses are moving up or down as a consequence of subsidence (land sinking or settling) or post-glacial rebound (land rising as melting ice reduces weight). Therefore, local relative sea level rise may be higher or lower than the global average. Changing ice masses also affect the distribution of sea water around the globe through gravity.
When a glacier or ice sheet melts, it loses mass. This reduces its gravitational pull. In some places near current and former glaciers and ice sheets, this has caused water levels to drop. At the same time water levels will increase more than average further away from the ice sheet. Thus ice loss in Greenland affects regional sea level differently than the equivalent loss in Antarctica. On the other hand, the Atlantic is warming at a faster pace than the Pacific. This has consequences for Europe and the U.S. East Coast. The East Coast sea level is rising at three to four times the global average. Scientists have linked extreme regional sea level rise on the US Northeast Coast to the downturn of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC)

Tuvalu’s sinking islands
Rising seas are already drowning two of the tiny archipelago’s nine islands, and the encroaching waves shattering the dreams of the local population. Tuvalu is now being seen as the sinking island paradise a home to the care free group of Polynesians due to the effects of climate change on this tiny island archipelago. A Polynesian country situated in Pacific group of Small Island States, Tuvalu is no more than a tiny dot in the Pacific Ocean, midway between Hawaii and Australia.
It is the fourth smallest nation in the world and is a home to 11,000 people, most of who live on the largest island of Fongafale, and the space available is running out fast on this tiny island nation. Tuvalu is an island atoll with a total land area of less than 26 square km. Two of Tuvalu’s nine islands are already threatening to go under water, which the government says is swallowed by sea-rise and coastal erosion. Most of the islands on these atolls are barely three metres above sea level, and at its narrowest point, Fongafale stretches just 20m across.
During storms, waves smash the island from the east and the west, sparing very little room for the residents for comfort. Many residents say they have nightmares that the sea will soon gobble them up for good, and not just as a distant fear in their slumber – but by the next generation. Scientists predict Tuvalu could become uninhabitable in the next 50 to 100 years. Locals say they feel it could be much sooner. To the locals the weather seems like changing very quickly like every second, day by day and hour to hour with ocean waves lapping just metres away from their homes.
According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Tuvalu is regarded as a resource poor, “least-developed country”, that is “extremely vulnerable” to the effects of climate change. Porous, salty soil contaminated by saline waters has made the ground almost totally useless for planting, destroying their staple food crops and decreasing the yields of various fruits and vegetables.
Most of their starchy Pacific island staples food such as taro and cassava can no longer be grown on the island and need to be imported from the outside at great expense, along with most of other food.
On this tiny atoll there is very little freshwater available with most of it drawn from underground aquifers. However, this supply of water has increasing become scarce since the rising ocean contaminated underwater ground supplies leaving the country dependent entirely on rainwater. The situation is worsening by droughts which are occurring at alarming frequency. Even if the locals could plant successfully, there is now not enough rain to keep even simple kitchen gardens alive.
On average, a family can spend around Au$200 (about K490) fortnightly on imported groceries, with the rising costs which is becoming necessary as the local supply of locally grown foods such as breadfruit, bananas and pandanus – fail to ripen, and fall to the sandy ground, inedible and rotten.
According to medical reports provided by the health authority on the island, fish which is also a regular source of protein are also becoming inedible due to poisoning by ciguatera. Ciguatera poisoning affects reef fish that have ingested micro-algaes expelled by bleached coral. When fish infected with these ciguatera toxins are consumed by humans, it causes an immediate and sometimes severe illness: vomiting, fevers and diarrhoea. Medical authorities are setting up facilities to study and manage climate change-related illnesses on the island.
Statistics provided my heath authority shows that around 10 Tuvaluans present with ciguatera poisoning every week, accounting for about 10 per cent of the weekly case-load of climate-related illnesses. Information on public health, says that cases of fish poisoning began to increase a decade ago; around the same time the bad weather patterns kicked in.
Equally, other climate-related illnesses that have increased on par with the changing weather include influenza, fungal diseases, conjunctivitis, and dengue fever, according to the hospital’s research. Higher daily temperatures are also putting people at daily risk of dehydration, heatstroke and heat rashes, the health authorities say.
“Generally the local population does not have the knowledge to understand the link between climate change and health but are always able to comprehend the dangers of these events by physically seeing what is happening to their island paradise which has been their home for decades.”
A small team of Tuvalu’s Bureau of Meteorology is working overtime in collecting and analyzing climate data on latest rainfall patterns to confirm an occurrence of another drought that will definitely worsen fresh water supply on the island.
According to local climate data, the biggest impacts of climate change on Tuvalu have been rising air temperatures, more intense and frequent storm surges and decreasing rainfall, as well as the total inundation of low-lying coastal parts of Funafuti – including, sometimes, the country’s lifeline, its runway.

Future
What does the future hold for the survival chances of these people when their paradise home for decades unknown will become totally downed and lost forever under the rising ocean. Residents are now realizing the worsening life situation on their paradise home and are migrating to countries like Australia and especially New Zealand at their own free will. Others will be forced to leave their beloved island paradise that will be lost forever which will definitely have self-identity crises for their future generations. There are already about 2,000 of them now settled in New Zealand, a migrant population that will double every five years.
As the situation worsens by the day, the older generations do not want to move as they believe they will lose their identity, culture, lifestyle and traditions. Younger generations see the desperation and the worsening situation and that it is not their choosing to leave but are being forced to out migrate as Climate Change Refugees.
During storm surges or the highest tides, the Pacific Ocean bubbles up from the sandy soil knocking down palm trees leaving them uprooted and scattered across a rocky, coral strewn beach, turning grey in the hot sun, their twisted, decaying root systems facing skywards.

Carteret Islands
The sea level rise and soil removal along coastal zones on a remote atoll Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea over 20 years resulting in destruction of agricultural land and contamination of water supplies.
The islanders are fighting a losing battle where some of its smaller or low laying areas have gone under water leaving islanders with no choice but to relocate to higher grounds. But the trouble is, there is no high ground on the island and they will have to be relocated elsewhere in Papua New Guinea mainland as climate refugees.
The islanders have been trying their best to mitigate the impacts of sea level rise by building seawalls and planting mangroves to hold back the rising tides but their efforts are in vain and they are fighting a losing battle against the inevitable.