Author: Jian Kim
Subheading: This paper aims to foster an understanding of climate change’s impacts on small island refugees. It also evaluates the practicality of an approach to the problem of climate refugees due to sea level rise: building coastal barriers. It also proposes some specific scientific methods to implement it.
Is climate change an issue of the future? Rising carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions have prevented earth’s heat from escaping the atmosphere, increasing global temperature. This melted more ice and thus led to a rise in sea levels. We often only regard the direct victims of our industrialization as polar bears and penguins losing their habitats. However, this issue has also influenced millions of people to suffer and lose their homes. The ones who are the most threatened now are those living in the small islands that are decreasing in size. Therefore, devising an innovative yet applicable solution to this problem is crucial to help out those homeless communities.
Since each country’s migration policies differ significantly and some even recently showed extreme responses such as hate crimes and anti-refugee protests, many prefer rebuilding and improving the environments of the disappearing islands to sending people to unknown, unwelcomed lands. This essay sheds light on the project plans that seek to rebuild islands for refugees.
First of all, Kiribati is an island country located in Oceania that is in threat of disappearing due to sea level rise. In 2012, Kiribati negotiated to buy parts of Vanua Levu, the second largest island of Fiji, to use it as a food supply before their mass migration. However, in recent years, Kiribati’s current president Taneti Maamau announced that he aims to raise islands to rebuild the safe community and infrastructures there, getting help from China and other countries. Maamau mentioned that “the strategy is still in development but clearly identifies raising our islands as a way forward in our fight against climate change”. He listened to the advice from science professor Paul Kench at Simon Fraser University. Kench asserted that the island needs to be stretched from half a meter to a meter by the process of dredging since atoll islands and the sea are mostly at the same height.
Tuvalu, a neighboring island country to Kiribati, is also suffering due to the same issue. In 2021, at a UN assembly, Tuvalu’s foreign minister gave an impressive speech that desperately urged member nations to decrease their greenhouse gas emission, standing in water that was created due to sea level rise. One surprising fact is that small island developing states are responsible for only 1% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Thus, people like the foreign minister of Tuvalu believe that blocking the cause itself by making stronger nations decrease their emission rate is the most practical solution. However, looking at the world wide carbon emission rate produced each year from 1940 to 2022, it is evident that, although many efforts have been made to reduce it, it continuously increased. It means that it is likely impossible to reduce the rate itself while it is plausible that we might be able to keep it.
Reference:
Alexis-Martin, B. (2019, August 15). How to save a sinking island nation. Bbc.com; BBC. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190813-how-to-save-a-sinking-island-nation
Guardian staff reporter. (2020, August 10). Kiribati’s president’s plans to raise islands in fight against sea-level rise. Theguardian.com; The Guardian. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/10/kiribatis-presidents-plans-to-raise-islands-in-fight-against-sea-level-rise
SBS 뉴스. (2022). “죽음의 과정” 시작됐다는 섬나라들…“대재앙 닥친다” / SBS / 모아보는 뉴스 [YouTube Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jcWVFE1q68
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