Apple Chui (left), Hannah Eisler Burnett (centre) and Taukiei Kitara study key issues for coastal communities.Credit: L: CPRO, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Apple Chui), M: Véronëque Ignace (Hannah Eisler Burnett)
The best asset that a coastal area has in the fight against climate change is its people. Whether they’re building sea walls or coral nurseries, or helping to create rich records of flooding events and cultural artefacts, coastal locals are shoring up their neighbourhoods. Scientists Taukiei Kitara from Tuvalu, Hannah Eisler Burnett from New York City and Apple Chui from Hong Kong are working to ensure that the people dealing with coastal challenges have the advocacy, training and protection they need.
TAUKIEI KITARA: Island advocate
Sea levels in the Pacific are predicted to rise by 15 cm or more by the 2050s, regardless of global carbon-emission reductions. When this happens, parts of Tuvalu — a group of nine main islands midway between Hawaii and Australia — will vanish forever. “It’s going to be a significant loss for our people,” says Taukiei Kitara, who was born on Nui, a Tuvaluan atoll. Now based at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, Kitara studies how climate change is impacting the culture, identity and sovereignty of small island states in the Pacific.
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The effect on Tuvalu, which has an average elevation of less than 2 metres above sea level, is severe. Increasingly warmer waters have bleached corals and forced fishermen farther out to sea. Seawater has seeped into the water table, forcing Tuvaluans to grow swamp taro and other staple crops in raised garden beds rather than underground pits — a practice that dates back thousands of years. Rising sea levels are also eroding the coastlines. Kitara says that after his birth, half of his umbilical cord was buried under a newly planted coconut tree some 30 or 40 metres away from the ocean’s edge, as per Tuvaluan tradition. “Now it’s right on the coastline,” he says.
Moving is an option for some Tuvaluans. Australia offers visas for 280 Tuvaluans each year to migrate and obtain permanent residency under the 2023 Falepili Union Treaty — a first-of-its-kind ‘climate visa’ designed to aid climate-induced migration. More than 3,000 Tuvaluans (almost one-third of the nation’s population) have entered a ballot for the first release of visas. But many Tuvaluans aren’t keen on becoming climate refugees, says Kitara, whose research explores the potential impacts of the treaty.
In a 2023 opinion piece1, Kitara and Carol Farbotko, also from Griffith University, argued that migrants from climate-vulnerable Pacific nations are often framed in Australia as both ‘unskilled labour’ and ‘climate migrants’, which reinforces harmful stereotypes and puts them at risk of workplace exploitation. Kitara and Farbotko called for more just and compassionate labour and climate-migration policies inspired by the Tuvaluan value of fale pili — caring for others like family.
Those who have chosen to stay on Tuvalu are not giving up. The Tuvaluan government wants to bolster the country’s climate resiliency by “focusing on adaptation projects like land reclamation and raising the elevation of existing land”, says Kitara. Between 2017 and 2023, Tuvalu’s capital Funafuti was expanded by 5%, or 7.8 hectares, by dredging up sand from its lagoon. Sea walls were constructed on the outer islands of Nanumaga and Nanumea to protect some 2,780 metres of coastline from rising sea levels and storm surges.
The narrowest part of Funafuti island, Tuvalu.Credit: Kalolaine Fainu/Guardian/eyevine
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