Rising Sea levels, Raising water issues in Tuvalu

As this will be one of my lasts posts I thought it would be appropriate to leave with talking about the most famous Pacific Island when it comes to Climate Change - Tuvalu. I’ll be looking at the issues faced by climate change and what they will do to try and alleviate these problems, which I feel reflects the topics I have raised in previous posts.

Tuvalu is one of the smallest nations in terms of national economy, land mass and population size. When they claimed independence from Britain in 1978, they were advised by the British to join with Kiribati as their soils were infertile, they have limited flora and fauna, and lack many resources (Aalsberberg andHay, 1992).  They have the typical issues of small islands states, but they could be worse, due to remittances (which contribute to 20% of national income) and foreign aid Tuvalu is better off than many other small islands (Asian Development Bank, 2002). 

Despite doing well from remittances and foreign aid, their economy is still weak and their physical attributes – mainly being low lying, makes them extremely vulnerable to climate change (Connell 2003). A rise of mean sea level would lift the zone of flooding and intensify storm waves. This would erode the coast line, which would be accentuated by greater frequency of storms (Connell 2003). Land losses would create competition for land, reduce agricultural production, and resources from flora and fauna (Connell 2003).

Fishing would be affected as Mangrove habitats will be damaged. As well as reefs would also be eroded, disturbing lagoon ecology (Connell 2003).

Islands above a certain size (about 1.5 hectares) contain a permanent lens of fresh water surrounded by salt water (Connell 2003). The volume is proportionate to the land size, so loss of land would create a loss in freshwater. This is worsened, less land increases the frequency of overwash, so water is contaminated by salt water (Connell 2003). Overwash would also increase coastal erosion and greater incidence of storms. Not only does drinking water become undrinkable but agriculture becomes affected too, with the soil not being the best already supplying it with salt water would only damage crop production further (Roy and Connell, 1991). The green house affect will also affect rainwater, provided another issue for water availability. Water scarcity has been talked about in previous posts, although loss of land is an issue for any island, even more so for an island like Tuvalu as it is far too small and vulnerable to cope with land loss. Although the issue of imagined geographies has already been examined and I am now presenting Tuvalu in this vulnerable state, they will still be experiencing the effects worse than most as they do have fewer resources to cope.

As many are aware emigration has been a method of adapting to climate change, some adaptation has been less extreme. De-salinization plants have been built to cope with the water issues created by climate change. This video shows the sort of methods used to conserve water and therefore live on the island with satisfying water availability.  

The video presented a few ways of conserving water, desalinisation is attractive but very expensive. Therefore UNESCO has advised collecting rainwater to be the main priority (Indymedia Climate 2005). Education was highlighted as being essential, as well as government intervention such as changing bank loan policies so that water tanks are mandatory (Indymedia Climate 2005).

An extreme response to the effects caused by climate change is emigration. In 2001 New Zealand accepted Tuvaluans as ‘environmental refugees’(Indymedia Climate2005). Around 3,000 refugees have been sent to New Zealand, but emigration is looking less promising (Indymedia Climate 2005). Australia have said they will not recognise Tuvaluans as environmental refugees and New Zealand have stringent migration requirements so the sick, elderly and poor are less able to migrate (Indymedia Climate 2005). Migration is an extreme measure, which some do not realise when articles indicate that the island will physically disappear which it will not. Tuvaluans do not want to leave, they decided to be a small country and not join Kiribati to save their culture, they do not want to jeopardise that again. This video presents some of the other options to adapting to climate change:

Although for the pessimist it seems migration seems to be the inevitable as demonstrated in this video. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSpDsP58udM