7 min read
This article is more than 6 years old
'We share the same backyard': The islands disappearing off Australia
Halfway between Queensland and Hawaii, 6,000 islanders are set to lose their homes. One is visiting Australia to fight for their survival.
Published 4 March 2018 3:10pm
Updated 5 March 2018 2:44pm
By Kate Sullivan
Image: Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. (Getty Images)
Read any backpacker’s guide to the Marshall Islands and it’ll tell you time is a loose concept in that part of the Pacific. Dinner at 7 will probably be served at 10. Your return flight may not turn up until the next day.
"Things happen when they happen, and a lot of times, they don’t happen on time,” poet and climate change activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner tells SBS News.
Kathy, 30, grew up in the Marshalls – an independent nation of more than 1,200 tropical islands that lie about halfway between northeastern Australia and Hawaii.
“We’re patient, everybody is,” she says.
But time is not something the locals have in droves; almost 6,000 of them live on low-lying islands that now face being swallowed up by rising seas.
Poet and climate change activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. Source: Supplied
Growing oceans
The Marshall Islands are on average only two metres above sea level.
“Some parts are also so narrow you can stand in the middle of the road and feel the ocean spray on either side,” Kathy says.
And that ocean is only getting bigger.
Some parts are also so narrow you can stand in the middle of the road and feel the ocean spray on either side.
A 2011 showed sea levels near the Marshall Islands had risen by about by 7mm per year since 1993, higher than the global annual average of 2.8–3.6 mm.
The science is nothing new; global warming is causing ice to melt and seas to expand, leading to increased flooding - but the realities have hit home in recent years.
The Marshall Islands are made up of more than 1,200 islands. Source: AP
“I’ve talked to a few of my elders and they’ve never seen flooding like that happen,” Kathy says.
“It brings the threat to our feet and reminds us: you might not be here soon.”
Source: Pacific Climate Change Science Program
How long have we got?
Last year, Kathy attended a conference on global warming in London – it was the first time she had shared a room with a climate scientist. Like many islanders aware of all the estimates out there about when calamity could hit the islands - she just wanted the facts.
“I cornered him [and asked] ‘do we have a fighting chance?’ and he said, 'long story short, he didn’t know, he just didn’t know'.”
Waves surge during a king tide event on Kili in the Marshall Islands in 2015. Source: Bikini Atoll Local Government
But some islands may be uninhabitable well before then.
“Something a marine biologist friend of mine said recently really struck me,” she says.
“It isn’t necessarily that our islands will go down, that they’ll disappear, but floodings that are occurring right now will happen so frequently that the islands will become unlivable.”
Collective responsibility
The Marshall Islands are home to about 53,000 people and Kathy is now a leading voice in their fight for climate justice around the world. This month she is visiting Australia.
The islands have close ties with the US - , and President Donald Trump’s recent stalling of the Paris Climate Agreement.
But, Kathy says, Australia must also take some responsibility for the islands.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Obama meets with Pacific Island leaders, warns of climate refugees
“I know some people would say ‘why is that our responsibility?’ but Australia is a huge emitter of carbon. It may not be the biggest, but every little bit counts... We contributed the least and yet, we are the ones who are getting affected first,” she says.
“I have been following the #StopAdani campaign and they [Australia] can’t keep opening any more coal mines.”
[Australia and the Marshall Islands] share the same backyard.
The $16 billion Carmichael coal mine proposed for Central Queensland would be one of the largest in the world.
“That’s disastrous for the rest of the Pacific and we share the same backyard.”
The red marker points to the location of the Marshall Islands, which lie about halfway between Australia and Hawaii. Source: Google Maps
"We are very disappointed in Australia because we are neighbours to them," she said.
Back in 2015, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton was caught on camera appearing to mock the threat of climate change to the region.
“Time doesn't mean anything when you're about to have water lapping at your door,” he said in response to a comment about the slow pace of events at the Pacific Islands Forum in Port Moresby.
But the latest government report shows Australia gives about $4.8 million in annual aid to the Marshall Islands, as well as emergency support following natural disasters.
Source: polhn.org
'What about our identity?'
Kathy now lives in Portland, Oregon, after moving for her partner’s job, but returns to the Marshalls as often as she can to visit her parents and check in on the non-profit she has co-founded.
Jo-Jikum (meaning ‘your home’ in the local language) aims to empower Marshallese youth to seek solutions to climate change. Over 50 per cent of islanders are under 29 and they are an “untapped resource,” Kathy says.
Kathy, far right, has founded a non-profit in the Marshall Islands to empower local youth to act on climate change. Source: JoJikum.org
“I was hit by how incredibly vulnerable we were,” she says.
But something bothered her, and still does today: “All these articles just assumed we would have to leave, that there was nothing we could do about it.”
“The way they spoke about us: ‘Will they have passports? Will they still be a country?’ I was like, how can they just be giving up on us already?”
How can they just be giving up on us already?
She was sick of being written off as “doomed” and more importantly, realised there was more at stake than just their houses: “We just lost our home. What about our identity? What about our culture?”
Kathy (pictured with her partner and daughter) at the UN Climate Summit. Source: AFP
Her first collection of poetry, Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter was published in 2017.
Fight or flight
The Marshallese people have the option to leave whenever they want. “We have direct and open immigration status that allows us to freely move to the US without green cards and without visas,” Kathy says.
But many aren’t looking for a quick fix; there’s simply no place like home.
“It’s home, it’s my island,” Kathy says. “It’s somewhere that my ancestors have been in for their entire lives, it’s somewhere where I will hear Marshallese language spoken and see it written on signs, that’s what I fight for.”
There’s still time to turn this ship around.
“We shouldn’t have to move, there’s still time to turn this ship around and do what is necessary to save our islands. Who we are is tied to that land... we can’t just leave.”
There’s a word in the local language, ‘iakwe’ (pronounced ‘yawk-way’) which islanders use to say ‘hello’, and ‘with love’.
“Literally translated, it means ‘you are my rainbow’,” Kathy says. It also has another meaning she never hopes to use: ‘goodbye’.
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner will be speaking at All About Women at Sydney Opera House on 4 March, the Wheeler Centre Melbourne on 6 March and WOMADelaide on 11 March.
