Climate Change and the Pacific

While the Pacific is often used as the “poster-child” of climate change – complete with images of islands submerged by rising seas – the reality is more complex, though no less urgent. Not all Pacific Islands are equally affected – those that are made up of atolls are more vulnerable to sea level rise than those with “high land.” While much of the literature on climate change and the Pacific focuses on the possibility of islands, particularly low-lying atolls, becoming submerged by the ocean, in fact it is likely that areas – and countries – will become uninhabitable long before they are submerged. Increasing saltwater intrusion into fresh water sources, coupled with population pressures and inadequate sanitation systems, mean that lack of water may well be the most immediate effect of climate change in small Pacific Island states – and the principal factor forcing people to leave their communities. Meeting in Cancun in 2010, the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed, for the first time, that mobility is a form of adaptation to climate change and invited states to undertake “measures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation, where appropriate, at national, regional and international levels.” In other words, some people will leave – indeed, some already are – because they see the writing on the wall and choose to migrate before they are forced to do so. Measures to adapt to the effects of climate change – sea-level rise, acidification of oceans, threats to water supplies, and increasing sudden-onset disasters – will have to include mobility.