Rising seas imperil remote island nation
Tidal surge a wake-up call for tiny Kiribati
TARAWA, Kiribati — One clear bright day last winter, a tidal surge swept over an ocean embankment here in the remote, low-lying island country of Kiribati, smashing through the doors and windows of Betio Hospital and spewing sand and debris across its maternity ward.
Beero Hosea, 37, a handyman, cut the power and helped carry frightened mothers through the rubble and water to a nearby school.
“If the next one is combined with a storm and stronger winds, that’s the end of us,” he said. “It’s going to cover this whole island.” Beware the king tide
For years, scientists have been predicting that much of Kiribati may become uninhabitable within decades because of an onslaught of environmental problems linked to climate change. And for just as long, many here have paid little heed. But while scientists are reluctant to attribute any specific weather or tidal event to rising sea levels, the tidal surge last winter, known as a king tide, was a chilling wake-up call.
“It shocked us ,” said Tean Rube, a pastor with the Kiribati Uniting Church. “We realized, OK, maybe climate change is real.”
Much of Kiribati, a col- lection of 33 coral atolls and reef islands scattered across a swath of the Pacific Ocean about twice the size of Alaska, lies no higher than 6 feet above sea level.
The latest climate models predict that the world’s oceans could rise 5 to 6 feet by 2100. The prospects of rising seas and intensifying storms “threaten the very existence and livelihoods of large segments (of Kiribati’s 110,000 people),” the government told the United Nations in a report last year.
The study lays out Kiribati’s future in apocalyptic detail. Causeways would be washed away, crippling the economy; degraded coral reefs, damaged by warming water, would allow stronger waves to slam the coast, increasing erosion, and would disrupt the food supply, which depends heavily on fish supported by the reefs. Higher temperatures and rainfall changes would increase the prevalence of diseases like dengue fever and ciguatera poisoning.
Even before that, scientists and development experts say, rising sea levels are likely to worsen erosion, create groundwater shortages and increase the intrusion of salt water into freshwater supplies.
In response, Kiribati has essentially been drawing up plans for its demise. The government has urged residents to consider moving abroad with employable skills. It bought nearly 6,000 acres in Fiji, anisland nation more than 1,000 miles away, as a potential refuge. Fiji’s higher elevation and more stable shoreline make it less vulnerable.
Anote Tong, a former president who pushed through the Fiji purchase, said it also was intended as a cry for attention from the world. “The issue of climate change is real, serious, and we’d like to do something about it if they’re going to take their time about it,” he said in a recent interview. No shortage of ideas
There is no shortage of ideas to avert Kiribati’s environmental fate. China’s construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea shows the promise of sophisticated island-engineering technology, experts say. Tong commissioned a study on raising Kiribati’s coastline.
But such measures are financially unrealistic for a resource-poor, aid-dependent country like Kiribati.
The parallel freshwater crisis also is fixable, at a cost. Many residents of South Tarawa, home to half the country’s people, now get their drinking water exclusively from rainwater tanks. Experts worry that as sea levels rise, Kiribati’s fragile groundwater supply will face even greater risks, while the next drought could quickly exhaust the municipal supply and household rainwater tanks. Kiribati could invest in desalinization equipment or ship in drinking water, but this is a country with only one paved road.
“It’s all doable,” said Doug Ramsay, the Pacific Rim manager at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Researchin New Zealand. “It’s just going to be a very expensive exercise.”