2
P. D. Nunn and J. M. Luetz
of people—Pacific Islanders—that came together here, as they often did in the late
afternoon, to sit on the sand or upturned boats, to yarn, to talanoa.
1 They joshed
with one another, some smoked, some were occasionally voluble, many more silent,
contemplative.
This particular evening, they eventually came around to discussing their
dilemma—one which countless coastal communities across the vast Pacific Islands
region are increasingly acknowledging to be theirs as well. The climate is changing.
The air is becoming warmer, night and day; the crops are struggling to grow as well
as they once did; the fish are less plentiful around the colourless corals you now
commonly find offshore. Food is becoming more difficult to acquire but thankfully,
one person said, we can always buy rice and noodles, even tinned fish, from the
village store. But it’s not the same as before.
And then there is the sea, once our friend who succoured us, gave us food, especially in times of exigency. Today its waters are not just getting warmer but it is
encroaching on the land more and more. Ua mai, ‘the water comes’, these people
say. It is eating away the land, the land in which our ancestors lie; some villages have
already started shifting inland, up the slope, but what do we do? How can we know
the future?
Our nation’s leaders say the climate is changing but they don’t live here, so what do
they actually know of our dilemma? Our elderly island chief says don’t worry because
the chances are that sea level will start falling one day very soon and everything will
return to normal. But we worry anyway because this is our ancestral land, given to us
by God. Why would He have done that if one day He was going to take it away from
us and force us to move elsewhere? Maybe God is punishing us, testing our resolve
like He tested that of Job.
2 Maybe we have not been sufficiently devout, maybe some
of us have strayed? After all, how many different churches do people in this village
now attend? What if some of them are not the right ones? What if Satan has gained
a foothold in our community? What should we do? What does God want us to do?
The Dilemma of the Pacific
For many thousands of coastal communities across the vast Pacific Islands region,
which spans almost one third of the earth’s surface, the dilemma described above is
very real, its immediacy having increased sharply over the past decade or so as the
pace of climate change has demonstrably accelerated (WMO 2020). Unprecedentedly
strong tropical cyclones have lashed parts of the region—Tropical Cyclone Pam
(2015) was the strongest ever to hit Vanuatu; Tropical Cyclone Winston (2016)
packed the strongest winds ever recorded in the southern hemisphere (Le De et al.
2018; Terry and Lau 2018). Rates of sea-level rise in the western Pacific are among
2 In the Christian bible, it is said that God allowed Satan to test the faith of the ‘blameless upright’
man named Job and see whether, in the face of repeated hardships, he would ever renounce his
faith—which he did not.
P. D. Nunn and J. M. Luetz
of people—Pacific Islanders—that came together here, as they often did in the late
afternoon, to sit on the sand or upturned boats, to yarn, to talanoa.
1 They joshed
with one another, some smoked, some were occasionally voluble, many more silent,
contemplative.
This particular evening, they eventually came around to discussing their
dilemma—one which countless coastal communities across the vast Pacific Islands
region are increasingly acknowledging to be theirs as well. The climate is changing.
The air is becoming warmer, night and day; the crops are struggling to grow as well
as they once did; the fish are less plentiful around the colourless corals you now
commonly find offshore. Food is becoming more difficult to acquire but thankfully,
one person said, we can always buy rice and noodles, even tinned fish, from the
village store. But it’s not the same as before.
And then there is the sea, once our friend who succoured us, gave us food, especially in times of exigency. Today its waters are not just getting warmer but it is
encroaching on the land more and more. Ua mai, ‘the water comes’, these people
say. It is eating away the land, the land in which our ancestors lie; some villages have
already started shifting inland, up the slope, but what do we do? How can we know
the future?
Our nation’s leaders say the climate is changing but they don’t live here, so what do
they actually know of our dilemma? Our elderly island chief says don’t worry because
the chances are that sea level will start falling one day very soon and everything will
return to normal. But we worry anyway because this is our ancestral land, given to us
by God. Why would He have done that if one day He was going to take it away from
us and force us to move elsewhere? Maybe God is punishing us, testing our resolve
like He tested that of Job.
2 Maybe we have not been sufficiently devout, maybe some
of us have strayed? After all, how many different churches do people in this village
now attend? What if some of them are not the right ones? What if Satan has gained
a foothold in our community? What should we do? What does God want us to do?
The Dilemma of the Pacific
For many thousands of coastal communities across the vast Pacific Islands region,
which spans almost one third of the earth’s surface, the dilemma described above is
very real, its immediacy having increased sharply over the past decade or so as the
pace of climate change has demonstrably accelerated (WMO 2020). Unprecedentedly
strong tropical cyclones have lashed parts of the region—Tropical Cyclone Pam
(2015) was the strongest ever to hit Vanuatu; Tropical Cyclone Winston (2016)
packed the strongest winds ever recorded in the southern hemisphere (Le De et al.
2018; Terry and Lau 2018). Rates of sea-level rise in the western Pacific are among
2 In the Christian bible, it is said that God allowed Satan to test the faith of the ‘blameless upright’
man named Job and see whether, in the face of repeated hardships, he would ever renounce his
faith—which he did not.