{"id":44140,"date":"2014-07-07T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=44140"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:33:41","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:33:41","slug":"climate-refugees-an-entire-island-nation-is-preparing-to-evacuate-to-fiji-before-they-sink-into-the-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/07\/climate-refugees-an-entire-island-nation-is-preparing-to-evacuate-to-fiji-before-they-sink-into-the-pacific\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Refugees: An Entire Island Nation Is Preparing to Evacuate to Fiji Before They Sink Into the Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sea<\/a>

Sea walls like these haven’t been enough to stop the steady rise of the seas around Kiribati. Reuters\/David Gray<\/p><\/div>\n

This has to be the weirdest business deal of the week: The Church of England just sold a chunk of forest-covered land on the Fijian island Vanau Levu for $8.8 million to the government of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. For the moment, Kiribati plans to use its 20-square-kilometer (7.7-square-mile) plot for agriculture and fish farming. But the investment is really a fallback for its\u00a0103,000 residents\u2014a place to live if they must leave\u00a0their home island.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would hope not to put everyone on [this] one piece of land, but if it became absolutely necessary, yes, we could do it,\u201d president Anote Tong told the Associated Press, via the Guardian<\/a>. Tong is awaiting parliamentary approval<\/a> of the land purchase before clearing that possibility formally with Fiji\u2019s officials.<\/p>\n

Why is Tong preparing for a\u00a0mass defection to an island 2,000 kilometers away?<\/p>\n

The seas around Kiribati\u2019s 32 atolls (ring-shaped coral reefs) are rising 1.2 centimeters (0.5 inches) a year\u2014about four times faster<\/a> than the global average\u2014thanks to the flux of ocean currents.\u00a0Some experts think that by 2100, the country will have disappeared beneath the waves<\/a>. That may be optimistic; some residents expect the sea to subsume their homes\u00a0within 20 or 30 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a grim outlook. But the present isn\u2019t exactly peachy either. With its atolls no more than about three meters (9.8 feet) above sea level, Kiribati currently faces periodic food shortages thanks largely to rising tides. Not only does rampant flooding caused by spring tides destroy homes and businesses, but it also increases the salt content of the soil, ravaging\u00a0crops and tainting fresh water sources. On top of that, coral bleaching caused by the heating of ocean waters has decimated the marine ecosystems built off those reefs, driving fish away. That\u2019s why\u00a0one of the short-term advantages of the purchase of the Vanau Levu plot is that it should help secure food supply\u00a0for Kiribati\u2019s residents.<\/p>\n

The situation\u00a0has gotten so bad that some Kiribati residents have\u00a0tried to claim asylum<\/a>\u00a0in New Zealand, arguing that the burning of fossil fuels by industrial countries is a form of persecution against people vulnerable to its consequences. So far, courts have dismissed these arguments for emigration, which may be why the Kiribati government is opting for the investment route instead.<\/p>\n

The people of Kiribati might have been the first to make these claims, but they probably won\u2019t be the last; recent estimates predict that\u00a0the number of \u201cclimate refugees\u201d\u2014people displaced by the effects of global warming\u2014will reach 700 million by 2050<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 qz.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The seas around Kiribati\u2019s 32 atolls are rising 1.2 centimeters a year\u2014about four times faster than the global average\u2014thanks to the flux of ocean currents. Some residents expect the sea to subsume their homes within 20 or 30 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}