Islands Against the Tide
How the Pacific Islands Are Pioneering their Survival
The Pacific Islands face a great calamity. In August 2024, the World Meteorological Organization reported some horrifying statistics regarding the impacts of climate change in the Pacific. In the central tropical Pacific, the sea level has risen 5-10 cm, while in the western tropical Pacific, the sea level has risen by 10-15 cm since the metric was measured in the 1990s. Furthermore, the Pacific Islands have been experiencing more frequent and more intense marine heat waves, with the sea surface temperature rising 0.4 degrees Celsius per decade since the 1980s, 3 times faster than the global average.
Despite contributing only 0.02% of all global emissions, the Pacific Islands are an apparent and unfortunate microcosm of worsening climate change and its global impacts. Rising sea temperatures and rising sea levels go hand in hand, destroying marine life, creating worsening meteorological conditions, and deteriorating the quality of water and land used for development. For this reason, some of the most significant scale climate migration comes from the Pacific, where people are often situated close to the sea level and in houses at or under sea level, gradually sinking in the ocean.
However, the Pacific Islands have not stopped their fight against the tide. Spatial information modeling and decision-making systems have been developed collaboratively by the nations of Australia, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea. These systems use radar technology like Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to map out and act upon inundation predictions, making this information ready to disseminate to local communities.
This vital information has also helped develop infrastructure that can mitigate the effects of rising sea levels. Over time, mangroves and sea walls are being used to artificially elevate these islands, protecting the quality of the land for farming and further development. In addition, many Pacific island nations have started reclamation projects to create elevated land for housing and industry by extending land artificially.
The strength of these efforts and others depends on constant awareness and connection. The Falepili Union and the Pacific Labour Mobility Arrangement are examples of global cooperation centered around relocating displaced individuals and providing job opportunities for workers who may have lost their industries to inundation. Furthermore, movements in person and through social media have worked to promote regional climate activism and innovations regarding this issue.
While these efforts have been practical, the long-term feasibility of this issue does come into question. Nations like Tuvalu have already worked to upload their history online, preserving their culture and their people in the face of the inevitable tide. There are lots of questions that the situation forces us to answer. The most prominent is how a nation can exist without a defined territory. However, the most important thing, and the one I would like to end this tale on, is, when the tide comes to us, will we be able to face it before it washes us away?