by Chris Tacket, 26/9/2013
Adapting to climate change is going to affect the
lives of every human on Earth. But for some those impacts are hitting
sooner and harder than they are for others. For Americans, the first to
feel the brunt of the changing climate are Alaskans, in particular the
indigenous tribes that live off the sea ice.
In May, The Guardian published an excellent feature on Newtok, Alaska and why residents there may become "America's first climate refugees."
In August, the BBC reported
on the tiny village of Kivalina, Alaska, and warned that villagers
there could see their entire village undersea within a decade.
Almost
no one in America has heard of the Alaskan village of Kivalina. It
clings to a narrow spit of sand on the edge of the Bering Sea, far too
small to feature on maps of Alaska, never mind the United States.
Which
is perhaps just as well, because within a decade Kivalina is likely to
be under water. Gone, forever. Remembered - if at all - as the
birthplace of America's first climate change refugees.
Four
hundred indigenous Inuit people currently live in Kivalina's collection
of single-storey cabins. Their livelihoods depend on hunting and
fishing.
The sea has sustained them for countless generations but
in the last two decades the dramatic retreat of the Arctic ice has left
them desperately vulnerable to coastal erosion. No longer does thick ice
protect their shoreline from the destructive power of autumn and winter
storms. Kivalina's spit of sand has been dramatically narrowed.
The
images of Kivalina are striking and disconcerting. The BBC report has a
great shot that shows just how precarious the small village is without
the frozen sea ice as a shield. And The Daily Mail have compiled even more.
This video from The Episcopal Church tells the story of the village and the challenge of fighting back a warming, rising sea.
The threat of coastal erosion
is something Americans all along both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico are
having to face, but for these small Alaskan villages, as the BBC
reports, the solution is not as easy as simply moving further inland.
Retreating
ice, slowly rising sea levels and increased coastal erosion have left
three Inuit settlements facing imminent destruction, and at least eight
more at serious risk.
The problem comes with a significant price
tag. The US Government believes it could cost up to $400m (£265m) to
relocate Kivalina's inhabitants to higher ground - building a road,
houses, and a school does not come cheap in such an inaccessible place.
And there is no sign the money will be forthcoming from public funds.
Kivalina
council leader, Colleen Swan, says Alaska's indigenous tribes are
paying the price for a problem they did nothing to create.
"If we're still here in 10 years time we either wait for the flood and die, or just walk away and go someplace else.
"The
US government imposed this Western lifestyle on us, gave us their
burdens and now they expect us to pick everything up and move it
ourselves. What kind of government does that?"
For
most Americans in the continental US, adapting to rising seas will mean
redesigning cities or putting homes on stilts, for example, which are
not insignificant or inexpensive challenges, but I don't think they
create the same sort of existential issues facing these indigenous
tribes.
For an extreme example of this sort of existential crisis
created by climate change, consider the case of the small, low-lying
islands in the Pacific. Ozy.com reports:
Rising seas, disappearing glaciers, melting ice, storm surges: The threat of climate change still feels distant to many people.
Not
for residents of small, low-lying islands in the Pacific. Global
warming has arrived, and it’s turned their nations — Micronesia, the
Marshall Islands, Palau, Kiribati and others — into slowly sinking
ships. In some regions, the freshwater has turned salty, farmlands are
barren and officials say rising waters will submerge entire nations by
century’s end unless concerted action is taken.
Concerted action has most definitely not been taken.
As a result, many of these countries have resorted to extreme measures. They’ve engaged global legal experts to figure out whether a drowned nation still exists,
have threatened legal action against coal plants a hemisphere away and
have tried to drum up support for a case at the International Court of
Justice. Quixotic as these tactics may sound, they risk alienating
wealthy countries — the very ones they’ll rely on for humanitarian aid
to help refugees from droughts and floods.
“There’s a real
existential question for these islands,” says Earthjustice attorney
Erika Rosenthal, who works with small island states to stem the volatile
tides of global warming. For these tiny nations, climate change raises
the “most urgent questions of national sovereignty.”
In
2009, the Marshall Islands’ ambassador to the U.S. asked Gerrard to
look into that very question, as well as other queries that sound
surreal: Is a country underwater still a nation-state? Does it retain its seat at the United Nations? What happens to national assets like fishing rights? And where should its citizens go?
[My emphasis]
Our
actions impact others, as does our inaction. The United States and the
rest of the global community via the United Nations needs to create a
comprehensive plan for how to attempt to right the wrongs being done to
these Alaskan tribes and Pacific islanders and everyone displaced by
climate change. We should work to make their transition to a new
location and way of life as easy as possible.
Source:
treehugger.com
