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David Longstreath/AP
Residents fish Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007, on the island of New Britain, Papua New
Guinea near Kimbe Bay. (AP)
Residents fish Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007, on the island of New Britain, Papua New
Guinea near Kimbe Bay. (AP)
Are Papua New Guineans the World’s First Climate Refugees?
A recent report by IRIN claims that inhabitants of Papua New Guinea’s Carteret Islands are the world’s first climate refugees. Others disagree.
30-Second Summary
Rising sea levels have flooded plantations and are threatening villagers of the Carteret Island in Papua New Guinea, reports U.N. operated humanitarian news organization IRIN, in an article titled, “Papua New Guinea: Home to the world’s first climate refugees.”
“Food gardens and coconut groves have been destroyed and children are going to school hungry,” Ursula Rakova, chief executive officer of Tulele Peisa, a local nongovernmental organization, said.
Rakova’s NGO hopes to raise $280,000 to build ten homes for islanders at higher elevation on the main land. While Papua New Guinea’s government raised funds for relocation in 2007, the ABG, Autonomous Bougainville Government, split the money across four islands, despite the fact that the people of the Carteret Island merited relocation.
While predictions of the Carteret Island’s looming disappearance have been in circulation for some time, the IRIN’s statement that the island’s inhabitants are “the first climate refugees” isn’t entirely accurate. The Independent, a daily newspaper in the U.K., reported that while the Carteret Islands were expected to be the first to vanish, the Lohachara Island in India’s Bay of Bengal, a 7,500-acre landmass, “has beaten them to the dubious distinction.”
Moreover, a report from the Science and Public Policy Institute, which took issue with many of the claims in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” stated, “The problem with the Carteret Islands, mentioned by Ms. Kreider, [Al Gore’s environmental advisor] arose not because of rising sea levels but because of imprudent dynamiting of the reefs by local fishermen.”
Steve Nerem, a researcher from the University of Colorado, told the BBC, “There’s a lot of evidence out there that we’re going to see at least a metre of sea level rise by 2100.” Nerem qualified his statement by saying that predicting sea levels is still an uncertain science.
“Food gardens and coconut groves have been destroyed and children are going to school hungry,” Ursula Rakova, chief executive officer of Tulele Peisa, a local nongovernmental organization, said.
Rakova’s NGO hopes to raise $280,000 to build ten homes for islanders at higher elevation on the main land. While Papua New Guinea’s government raised funds for relocation in 2007, the ABG, Autonomous Bougainville Government, split the money across four islands, despite the fact that the people of the Carteret Island merited relocation.
While predictions of the Carteret Island’s looming disappearance have been in circulation for some time, the IRIN’s statement that the island’s inhabitants are “the first climate refugees” isn’t entirely accurate. The Independent, a daily newspaper in the U.K., reported that while the Carteret Islands were expected to be the first to vanish, the Lohachara Island in India’s Bay of Bengal, a 7,500-acre landmass, “has beaten them to the dubious distinction.”
Moreover, a report from the Science and Public Policy Institute, which took issue with many of the claims in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” stated, “The problem with the Carteret Islands, mentioned by Ms. Kreider, [Al Gore’s environmental advisor] arose not because of rising sea levels but because of imprudent dynamiting of the reefs by local fishermen.”
Steve Nerem, a researcher from the University of Colorado, told the BBC, “There’s a lot of evidence out there that we’re going to see at least a metre of sea level rise by 2100.” Nerem qualified his statement by saying that predicting sea levels is still an uncertain science.
Headline Links: Climate change refugees
Ursula Rakova, head of the NGO Tulele Peisa said, in regard to the flooding of the Carteret Island, “Salt water seeps through the land making it impossible for food to grow. Breadfruit is seasonal and not as plentiful as it was 30 years ago and fruits are getting smaller in size … bananas struggle to grow in the salt-inundated land.”
Source: IRIN (humanitarian news)
New reports documented by the BBC indicate that we may see at least a meter increase in sea level before the end of the century. Making the threat more tangible, Simon Holgate, a researcher from the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory—who was not involved in the reported study—explained, “Eighty to 90% of Bangladesh is within a metre or so of sea level so if you live in the Ganges delta you’re in a lot of trouble; and that’s an awful lot of people.”
Source: BBC
Background: Lohachara
On Dec. 24, 2006, the Independent, a U.K. newspaper, stated, “The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.” It also reported the island of Kiribati, an uninhabited island in the Pacific, vanished eight years prior. The article’s author further predicted, “As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.”
Source: The Independent
An EU report says that “vicious” conflicts will erupt in the world’s poorest countries in response to failing harvests and resource shortages, and that this will result in “millions of ‘environmental’ migrants by the year 2020.”
Source: findingDulcinea
Related Topics: The Pacific Community and food costs
The Secretariat of the Pacific Community presented a statement summarizing the region’s concerns, which included an over-reliance on imported staples like rice, flour and noodles. The price of these items are continuously rising due to heightened fuel costs, which are considerable given the distance of these islands from the world’s major markets.
Source: IPS news
One BBC correspondent, Saleemul Huq, criticized Tony Blair and the leaders of the last G8 summit for excluding the world’s smaller nations: “It is the world’s poor who are on the frontline of climate change, yet they have done the least to contribute to the problem.
Source: BBC
Contrary to statements made in the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” “There have been no mass evacuations of populations of islanders … [T]he tide-gauges maintained until recently by the National Tidal Facility of Australia show a mean annual sea-level rise over the past half-century equivalent to the thickness of a human hair.”
Source: Science and Public Policy
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