Islanders’ refuge
Fear of rising seas helps feed Springdale’s Marshallese population.
MAJURO ATOLL, Marshall Islands — Valentino Keimbar hides from the intense heat in the shade of a breadfruit tree, waiting for his basketball game to begin. It was supposed to start a couple of hours ago, maybe three, but time matters little here on the Marshall Islands.
Keimbar would love to stay in the vast Pacific Ocean on this tiny string of atolls, which he considers a precious gift from his ancestors. But he thinks that hotter weather and rising seas may soon force everyone to go and that many will choose an unlikely place 6,000 miles away: Springdale, Ark.
For more than three decades, Marshallese have moved in the thousands to the Ozark Mountains for better education, jobs and health care, thanks to an agreement that lets them live and work in the U.S. This historical connection makes it an obvious destination for those facing a new threat: global warming.
Keimbar, 29, last year traveled to Springdale seeking medical treatment for his 6-year-old son. Now he’s considering moving permanently to secure a solid future for his children.
“Probably in 10 to 20 years from now, we’re all going to move,” he said.
Climate change poses an existential threat to places like the Marshall Islands, which protrude only 6 feet above sea level in most places. Residents say storm surges are getting worse, as are king tides, when the alignment of Earth, the moon and sun combine to produce the most extreme tidal effects. Both cause floods that contaminate fresh water, kill crops and erode land.
As a result, some Marshallese think an exodus is inevitable, while others are planning to stay and fight.
A Compact of Free Association, signed in 1986 by the U.S. government and the Republic of the Marshall Islands, allows Marshall Islands citizens unrestricted travel in the United States.
Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum is a vocal advocate for keeping global warming to a minimum, a position he’ll be pushing when world leaders meet in Paris next week seeking a way to limit fossil fuel emissions.
“The thought of evacuation is repulsive to us,” he said. “We think that the more reasonable thing to do is to seek to end this madness, this climate madness, where people think that smaller, vulnerable countries are expendable and therefore they can continue to do business as usual.”
The Marshallese who choose to leave have settled in Hawaii, Oklahoma and the Pacific Northwest, but Springdale has the most on the U.S. mainland and has taken on a special significance. Their numbers there have expanded to 6,000, nearly one-tenth of those who remain back home. Some jokingly call it “Springdale Atoll,” and there’s even a Marshallese Consulate, the only one on the mainland U.S.
The pioneer was a man named John Moody, who moved in 1979 seeking an education and stayed for a job at Tyson Foods Inc. Family and friends followed, and the area’s population of Marshallese swelled after 1990.
“Arkansas is the land of opportunity,” said Josen Kaious, from the Marshall Islands town of Laura, who’s lived in Springdale before and plans to move back next year. “You can help your family, and do whatever you want.”
Carmen Chong Gum, the Marshallese consul general in Springdale, said that while people still move for better jobs and health care, some are now citing climate change as a factor.
Gum works in a two-story building just off downtown’s main street. It’s decorated with a U.S. map with push pins marking where Marshallese live, a bulletin board listing job opportunities, and posters depicting medicinal plants and tropical fish found in the Marshall Islands.
Her people now even have their own newspaper. The first edition, published this fall, was written entirely in Marshallese and featured half-page advertisements for Marshall Islands political candidates because Marshallese living in Springdale can vote absentee.
There are also more serious challenges for those who move. Marshallese who live and work in the U.S. don’t automatically become citizens, and most aren’t eligible for welfare. That can result in hardship for any who suffer a serious illness or lose a job.
At the Tyson poultry plant where she works, Daisy Loeak has about two seconds to scan each freshly-killed Cornish hen that comes down the production line to decide if it’s of premium quality. Any flaw like a bruised wing or a broken leg means it should be sold at a discount.
She routes the hens onto conveyor belts before they’re packed into boxes and flash-frozen. Out of 300 workers at the plant, Loeak is one of about 120 Marshallese. She moved to Springdale in 2008 with her grandparents, who traveled to the U.S. for a funeral and ended up staying.
But she wells up with tears as she talks about rising sea levels and says she misses her homeland.
“In the Marshall Islands, it’s just more carefree,” she said. “You go where you want.”
Those who stay face their own challenges. At the Rita graveyard in Majuro, where many of his relatives are buried, Carlon Zedkaia watched in February as a king tide swept in and washed up against the base of gravestones, collapsing some and exposing human remains.
“It’s not our fault that the tide is getting higher,” he said. “Just somebody else in this world that wants to get rich.”
Poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner said the world needs to save her islands to save itself — that if the atolls are allowed to slip beneath the waves, the rest of the Pacific and the U.S. coastline would be next.
“What will happen to our culture? What will happen to our stories? What will happen to thousands of years of history?” she said. “What will happen to the next generation? They won’t know where they’re from. They’ll be rootless. They’ll just be wandering. And I don’t want that to happen at all.”