South Pacific Islands Fight Extreme Climate Change
Climate change has wreaked havoc in the South Pacific islands, causing surges and flooding, destroying food crops and hindering the tourism industry.
The words “South Pacific” have long conjured images of a tropical paradise: beautiful islands, tranquil beaches, peaceful people and a welcoming environment. However, these images are now threatened as the Pacific island countries face the challenges of climate change.
In April 2004, the capital city of Fiji, Suva, was under water for two weeks. “It’s a national disaster, and may be a result of climate change,” says Taito Nakalevu, a Fijian and the Climate Change Adaptation Officer with the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) based in Samoa.
With Canada’s assistance, SPREP is working on a three-year project in the Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa, and Vanuatu designed to help local people adapt to climate change. Despite the fact that Pacific island countries have minimal greenhouse gas emissions and thus don’t contribute very much to climate change, they bear the brunt of climate change.
“Climate change has an impact on almost every aspect of our lives,” says Mr. Nakalevu. “Most of our rural communities are still very dependent on natural resources such as fisheries, agriculture, or forestry to earn a living, but because of climate change, these resources are becoming scarcer.”
For instance:
- Coastal fisheries are experiencing problems due to coral bleaching. When the temperature increases by one or two degrees, the coral begins to die and fish populations decrease. This impacts not only on fishers’ livelihoods, but also the tourism industries derived from the coral reefs.
- Higher temperatures are also affecting agriculture. Planting seasons and crop yields cannot be predicted with accuracy, and farmers no longer know when to plant to get the maximum yield.
- High-energy waves are bombarding coastal communities and washing away land and significant cultural relics that need to be protected.
- In December 2002, the strongest cyclone ever recorded in the Pacific region hit the Solomon Islands—a category 5 storm with sustained winds of 245 km/h and gusts up to 340 km/h—destroying much of the islands’ subsistence food crops and forcing the inhabitants to rely on emergency aid to avoid starvation.
“Things are becoming much more extreme,” says Mr. Nakalevu. “We’re used to hurricanes and typhoons happening every year, but now it appears that the path they are taking and the force with which they are coming is changing.” For example, in February 2004, Cyclone Ivy nearly hit the entire string of islands of Vanuatu “from north to south in one go.” Another cyclone hit the Federated States of Micronesia in April 2004, completely devastating the province of Yap. More than 80 percent of people lacked drinking water, and about 90 percent of public utilities and private homes were damaged.
Death tolls resulting from extreme weather are also rising. “Last year, in one case, people ignored the warnings from the meteorological office because they didn’t believe them,” says Mr. Nakalevu. ‘‘They had never been hit before, and hurricanes didn’t usually come from a northwest direction. Six people were killed.”
This project aims to build the capacity of Pacific island countries to adapt to climate change by increasing policy-makers’ awareness and understanding of climate change. Furthermore, climate change is being mainstreamed into national planning and budgeting processes of government departments. Additional work has been done to test pilot projects in small communities to assess their climate-related vulnerabilities and work out the best solutions. In some cases, this means actually moving entire villages further inland to decrease their vulnerability to continuous storm surges or coastal inundation. Furthermore, through this project, Canada contributes to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, an ambitious agenda agreed on by world leaders to promote sustainable development and improve peoples’ lives by 2015.
Mr. Nakalevu says the project’s biggest achievement so far is contributing to a better knowledge of climate change for 120 key players in government, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. “We’ve trained them in how to carry out community vulnerability assessments,” he says. “This is cutting-edge work: it has never been done before in the South Pacific. Most of the assessments done before were carried out on a broad regional basis using scientific projections and computer-generated climate models. This time we’re starting from the bottom up: how does this affect the community, the livelihood of the people? Much more specific information leads to much more specific solutions.”
However, he adds: “The Pacific is such a vast region; the four pilots are a minute mirror of what needs to be looked at in terms of adapting to extreme climate change. We’re just starting.”
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