Threat of Sea Level Rise to Pacific Nations

Low-lying Pacific island nations face severe pressures from rising sea levels caused by climate change. Rising sea levels erode coastlines, damage infrastructure, cause flooding, and contaminate freshwater reserves and crop fields. Eventually, they force population shifts and reduce economic zones and territorial seas. The resulting societal pressure to adapt to these changes further strains affected countries. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted a rise of more than three feet (one meter) by 2100, threatening to endanger all the world's land masses, not exclusively low-lying islands. Terrorist groups and extremist organizations may capitalize on the destabilizing effects of climate change, adding political, economic, and social complexity to the issue.

Date: The threat to Pacific island nations from rising sea levels was first detected in the 1970s.

Place: Oceania

Key Events

• 1977: Severe Tuvalu flooding.
• 1993: Prime Minister Bikenibeu Paeniu outlines Tuvalu's climate-change stance.
• December 1997: At the Kyoto Climate Change Convention, the Tuvaluan representative states sea-level rise is affecting Tuvalu's survival.
• 1999: Two uninhabited Kiribati islets sink underwater.
• September 2001: American environmental activist Lester R. Brown declares Tuvaluans the world's first climate refugees.
• 2002: Tuvalu prime minister Koloa Talake calls for legal action against international carbon polluters; Leo Falcam, president of Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), states he expects massive population relocation as the result of rising sea levels.
• 2003: Kiribati government begins implementing climate change strategies.
• 2004: Carteret Islands Council of Elders forms Tulele Peisa to organize voluntary relocation of population.
• 2007: Australian Green Party proposes climate refugee visa.
• 2008: Kiribati President Anote Tong requests training for Kiribati citizens to become skilled migrants. November 11, Mohamed Nasheed is elected president of Maldives, campaigning for international attention to sea-level threats to Maldives.
• November 2009: Kiribati governmental video appeal states that the rising sea pollutes freshwater reserves. In December, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Denmark, the Tuvaluan delegation demands a new protocol for raising emission cuts, which stalls the conference but is ultimately rejected.
• March 2009: The CIA creates a division focusing on climate change—The Center on Climate Change and National Security. The program is later closed.
• March 2012: President Tong negotiates for five thousand acres of relocation land in Fiji. IPCC predicts sea rise will exceed three feet by 2100.
• February 2014: Conference on Small Island Developing States in Samoa focuses on climate change.
• February 13, 2015: Research states sea-level rise often changes islands rather than sinks them. In August, Tong requests an international moratorium on new coal mines. In September, New Zealand's first "climate change refugee" is deported to Kiribati.
• September 2016: US President Obama states, "Climate change poses a significant and growing threat to national security, both at home and abroad."
• September 2019: Climate change is minimally emphasized in US President Trump's national security strategy.
• October 2021: The Biden Administration releases reports showing the growing threat climate change poses to national security, calling the issue an “existential threat."

Status

Though it has been largely assumed that rising sea waters will drown the reef islands of the South Pacific, a study released in 2015 by coastal geomorphologist Paul Kench and colleagues states that rising sea levels do not automatically cause atolls to sink, and, in fact, in 80 percent of the islands studied, sediments of the islands, which are composed of crushed coral, shift and cause the islands to move or to grow. However, these patterns have been noted for undeveloped islands; those such as Kiribati, with existing sea walls, roads, and other human-made infrastructure, will have a more challenging experience with rising sea levels.

At the 2014 UN Climate Summit in Lima, Peru, President Anote Tong of Kiribati was highly critical of the lack of response to his country's plight on the part of developed nations. The rising sea levels in the Pacific have been the primary topic of conversation at climate conferences, including the 2014 Conference on Small Island Developing States. It was likely to be a topic of discussion at the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris. Meanwhile, Australian and New Zealand leaders have refused to extend their commitments on climate change in the early 2010s. New Zealand's first "climate change refugee," Ioane Teitiota, was deported to Kiribati in September 2015.

The sea level was rising at an average of 0.7 millimeters annually by 2010, but by 2023, this increased to 3.4 millimeters. From 1993 to 2023, the sea rose a total of 100.5 millimeters, making a humanitarian crisis nearly inevitable. As competition for resources, populations, and governmental instability grow, terrorist organizations have ample opportunity to capitalize on these weaknesses, exploiting them for their own gain. Recruitment and support are easier in times of turmoil, and as terrorist groups grow in human and monetary capital, violence increases.

In-Depth Overview

In the 1960s, coastal erosion necessitated widespread seawall construction across Fiji. By 1970, retreating shorelines were also evident in Tonga, Samoa, and Tuvalu, as were increasing general temperatures in the Pacific. In the early 1990s, Prime Minister Bikenibeu Paeniu of Tuvalu established a national protocol to address climate change and, in 1997, told the United Nations that climate change presented severe risks to his country's survival. In 2002, Tuvalu Prime Minister Koloa Talake suggested legal action against carbon polluters to combat climate change. That same year, President Leo Falcam of the Federated States of Micronesia announced that the world's first "climate change refugees" faced probable relocation from their homelands.

In the early 2000s, the Kiribati government began developing long-term strategies to prepare the country for the predicted increasing sea level. In 2006, the Carteret Islands Council of Elders formed a nonprofit group that facilitated voluntary relocation of the islands' population of thirty-three hundred people. In 2007, the Saoluafata, Samoa villagers observed that their coastline had retreated by 164 feet (fifty meters) since 1997. In 2008, Tong refused to accept his people's fate as climate refugees, calling for training to help the population become skilled migrants. His government released an international video appeal, explaining that the sea was breaching their seawalls and contaminating their fresh-water supply.

At the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, representatives of Kiribati and Tuvalu adopted different strategies to deal with the rising sea levels affecting their countries. Tuvalu stuck to an agreed-upon cap on rising global temperatures of 1.58 degrees Celsius. Still, Kiribati relaxed its insistence on this cap in exchange for greater access to adaptation funds from Australia to ameliorate climate-change impacts. In 2011, Tong began negotiating to buy land in Fiji to resettle Kiribati's population eventually.

Asia is likely to be impacted more than any other region. Seventy percent of the population who is predicted to experience a negative impact from sea level rises reside in Vietnam, Thailand, China, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan. Egypt is also at an elevated risk in Africa because its lowest point is 133 meters below sea level. The Netherlands is most at risk in Europe, with half of its population living below sea level. Three of the most severely affected nations in the early twenty-first century include the Maldives, Kiribati, and Tuvalu, the last being at particular risk because its main island, Funafuti, is sinking due to geological changes.

Bibliography

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