Migraine is a painful nuisance. You don’t know when it will act up, nor do you have control of its duration before it dissipates. The recurrent throbbing headache drains your brain power and at times paralyzes your sensibility. If you’re a patient with migraine, I bet you will do all you can to prevent and reduce its chances to recur, no? What about a migraine that entails humanitarian action? Many countries and local communities consider immigrants as a group of job-seizing-and-welfare-siphoning raiders. Whether immigrants come from legal or illegal channels, they often begin their pursuit of happiness in a newfoundland against discrimination.
In Kiribati, a remote island country in equatorial Pacific, migration of I-Kiribati, as its people call themselves, has taken place as a result of rising sea levels. Half of the country’s population of 111,000 people lives in South Tarawa, the capital and hub of Kiribati. The rapidly growing urban area is less than 9.8 feet (3 meters) above sea level, and yet Tarawa has an extremely high population density. Generally, the reasons for people to relocate can be divided into economic migration or non-economic migration such as political asylum, war and drought. Kiribati certainly fits the bill for both.
Kiribati is recognized as a Least Developed Country (LDC) and is ranked 170th of 186 countries on per capita GDP, according to an official paper. The economy is highly dependent on fishing licensing fees, remittances and donor assistance. The phosphate rock mining until 1979 has accumulated a large reserve fund with growing interest to government revenue. But still, with an increased population and rapid urbanization that are commonly seen in many other developing countries as well (except China’s aging population), Kiribati has to deal with an alarmingly high rates of unemployment and infant mortality resulting from insufficient healthcare.
If there’s no job in the home country, it’s natural for youths to seek opportunities abroad. Well, global warming aggravates this outgoing labor force. The sandy, tropical islands have few natural resources including water and are prone to drought. Joshua Keating, author of Invisible Countries, poses a poignant question: “Countries cannot be destroyed; they can only become other countries, the land they occupy now controlled by someone else. But what if there is no more land?”
As glaciers melt at an unprecedented speed, warm seawater and overfishing are bleaching coral reefs, further damaging the food chain as high up as humans’. Where do you think our favorite seafood comes from? The land erosion has driven I-Kiribati to move to higher ground or even relocate abroad. The term “climate refugees” is derived from a headline-making lawsuit surrounding I-Kiribati Ioane Teitiota. Long story short. Mr. Teitiota brought a case against the government of New Zealand at the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) in February 2016 after authorities denied his claim of asylum as a “climate refugee.” He was deported from New Zealand to Kiribati six months before. Early this January in its first ruling on climate change-related asylum seeking, the HRC stated that countries may not deport individuals who face climate change-induced conditions that violate the right to life. The landmark decision surely sets a global precedent. To the developed countries, an influx of climate refugees reaching ashore to enter their boundaries of sovereignty is akin to a migraine, especially to those xenophobic leaders and citizenry. You don’t know when the aliens will come to you and how long will they stay in your country. You have to deal with this humanitarian migraine, as you are the last resort of homeless climate refugees who exert their rights to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. In this case, the inhabitable condition of home countries is a persecution.
This is the beginning of an end of climate diplomacy in this century.
Kiribati is only an epitome of the international and internal migration that is confronted by low-lying countries and coastal communities around the world. Because the tropical country is only at Michael Jordan’s height above sea level, it is prone to be one of the first countries that will be wiped out off the world map as a result of rising sea levels and land erosion. After all, Kiribati is so small that you can barely see it on the map. Until you zoom in will you find a string of dots.
It is a known fact that climate change displaces wildlife and humans. When Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, tens of thousands of people had to be evacuated and relocated, some even resettled elsewhere permanently. As the planet warms, species are shifting where, when, and how they thrive. According to the National Geographic citing a federal study, half of all species are on the move. Fishery communities will be hard hit as they depend on certain kind of marine commodities for livelihoods. Kiribati may have a shrinking land but it has one of the world’s largest maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). However, bathed in the cruelty of global warming and marine pollution, schools of fish including tuna—Kiribati’s largest economic resource—may have swum on migration toward cooler waters or die together with the bleaching coral reef. That’s a migraine to the fishing industry.
To Pacific islanders, being labeled as “climate refugees” connotes a stigma equivalent to being second-class citizens. During Anote Tong’s presidency (2003-2016), the government launched the “migration with dignity” policy to allow I-Kiribati to apply for jobs on offer in neighboring countries such as New Zealand. Educated young I-Kiribati seem to be more receptive to the policy than their parents or grandparents who would rather live and die where they were born. Researchers shed light on one projection that a 19.7-inch (50 centimeter) rise in sea level could displace 1.2 million people from low-lying islands in the Caribbean Sea and the Indian and Pacific oceans. That number almost doubles if the sea level rises by 2 meters, approximately Michael Jordan’s height. When ethnic groups are disbanded and displaced, their culture including languages is susceptible to assimilation with new culture or gradually lost over generations. If this is not a migraine-turn-terminal-illness in linguistics, what is?
Make no mistake. The migraine of migration could lead to far-reaching implications. As I randomly find an image of Kiribati on the internet, seeing a long strip of beige land covered with dense palm trees, shades of turquoise and gray in fluidity hugging the contour of land, I thought to myself what if rising sea level has already threatening Kiribati’s drinking water supplies. Stay tuned for the next post on water and sanitation.