Is it possible to make out-migration from the Pacific a success?
Majuro — Scientists — and political leaders in the Pacific — are increasingly dire in their predictions about potential inundation of islands by rising seas in the foreseeable future. At the same time, we are being inundated by news about potential ‘climate refugees’ seeking help from Australia and New Zealand in particular.
In 2009, when only a few people in the region were talking about climate migration, University of the South Pacific Professor Patrick Nunn said many Pacific islands were in danger of extinction from sea level rise and should seek relocation aid.
‘By 2100, I don’t see how many islands will be habitable,’ said Nunn, a Fiji-based professor of oceanic geoscience and a leading climate researcher. For coral atolls such as the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Maldives — most of which are barely a meter above sea level — habitation will be impossible toward the end of the century, he predicted. But, he pointed out, it is a mistake to perceive sea level rise as an ‘atoll issue’ because low-lying coastal areas — such as Fiji’s Rewa Delta — will be heavily impacted by rising sea levels. Nunn’s urgent recommendation: ‘If relocation is to happen by 2050, then by 2020 a plan must be in place.’
While Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Maldives have been making headlines with climate appeals for a while, and lately have been joined by the Marshall Islands, planning for migration isn’t yet being done, in large part because most people, including leaders, don’t want to accept that the climate battle is a lost cause. Over the past couple of years, however, these issues are being broached in a more systematic way. A recent international conference hosted by the Columbia University Center for Climate Change Law asked a series of questions, including: If a nation is under water, is it still a state? What becomes of its exclusive economic zone? What obligations do other nations have to take in the displaced populations, and what are these peoples’ rights and legal status once they arrive?
Is international migration the only solution for atolls, and internal migration the solution for coastal residents of high islands in the Pacific? What is the experience of islands with migration to date that could offer clues to confronting the impending climate crisis?
The Marshall Islands may have the most experience with forced internal migration in the Pacific, with multiple populations moved to accommodate United States nuclear weapons tests at Bikini and Enewetak and missile tests at Kwajalein. Those experiences, commented Marshall Islands Cabinet Minister Tony deBrum during a media conference at last month’s Pacific Islands Forum in Majuro, are ‘like fingernails on a blackboard. Our forced relocations have made the Marshall Islands extremely suspicious of relocation.’
One of the few planned and islander-driven relocation efforts happened in the 1990s when Bikinians made a serious effort to purchase property on the Hawaiian island of Maui as a relocation site for their population. But the plan fell flat when it ran into opposition from the Maui community, largely due to concerns about access to land and how the Bikinians would integrate with the local community.
In recent times the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau have seen large segments of their populations migrate to the United States — by ones and twos and in small groups — using the visa-free access in the Compact of Free Association treaties with Washington. Recent studies indicate that one-third of the Marshalls and FSM populations now live in the U.S. or its Pacific territories of Guam and Saipan — with out-migration continuing at a steady pace. Over 49,000 from the FSM and over 22,000 from the Marshall Islands now live in the US
How are these migrants doing in the US? A 2012 survey by Francis X. Hezel, SJ, and Michael J. Levin of Micronesians living in the US and its Pacific territories indicates that, in general terms, those who’ve moved to the U.S. mainland are faring better than those living in Guam and Hawaii. In the mainland, the survey found, there were fewer homeless; Micronesians were less dependent on welfare and food stamps, and had higher household incomes than their cousins in Hawaii, Guam and Saipan. High crime rates are often attributed to FSM migrants, particularly in Guam and Hawaii, and the Hezel/Levin report documented that 430 FSM people have been deported from the US and its territories for committing felonies. No similar survey has been conducted on Marshallese living in the U.S., but islanders face many of the same challenges including a significant number of deportations following felony crimes in the US
Many Micronesians and Marshall Islanders living in the US moved because the educational and job opportunities available in America don’t exist at home. Some return home or are deported, but the vast majority is putting down permanent roots, with their children becoming US citizens by virtue of birth in the United States.
Of the large numbers of people migrating to the US mainland, many have headed to Midwest locations where factory jobs are easily available. The Springdale, Arkansas Marshallese community is apparently the largest concentration of one group of islanders in the US, with estimates of as many as 10,000 Marshallese living in this Northwest Arkansas area — and thousands more in the nearby states of Missouri and Oklahoma.
The visa-free access provision in the Compacts is a trade for the defense control the United States maintains in these three US-affiliated island groups. In the 1980s, when US and island negotiators hammered out these treaties, they saw US access as both a safety valve for small islands that had little opportunity to create job opportunities for their citizens as well as a means for islanders to gain education and experience that they could use back home. The safety valve has proved itself in light of stagnant economies in the FSM and Marshall Islands coupled with generally poor quality public schools. A reasonable number of Marshall Islanders who complete college education in the US are returning home to work. But islanders’ ability to gain work without need of special permits has resulted in extraordinarily high dropout rates from US colleges. Low-performing public schools in the islands have not prepared most young people to compete in a US academic environment, relegating many to entry level jobs with little hope for advancement.
‘Relocation is one of the most difficult things to talk about and to convince people that the home they’ve lived in for centuries is no longer a viable option,’ said Nunn in addressing a future where sea level rise is a fact, not a prediction.
Perhaps the best advice that can be offered is that for islanders who are migrating to the United States and for those who may be forced by climate-caused sea level rise to move to Australia, New Zealand or other large countries in the future, preparation at home is a key first step to successful resettlement. Hezel and Levin make an interesting point about how Micronesians work to maintain their culture while living in the US: ‘FSM migrants may have left their home islands, but they have not abandoned their language or culture. Most FSM people prefer to use their native language at home with their family, even if they must speak English most of the time in the school or the workplace. Women everywhere continue to wear the distinctive dresses that identify them as Micronesian.’
But ability to speak English and appreciation of cultural and behavior norms in their new home is a good recipe for making a successful transition. Many Marshall Islanders and Micronesians have had to learn this the hard way through trial and error in a country whose legal system is not forgiving or prone to offering second chances. Addressing education and life skill requirements at home requires a level of planning and preparation that has not existed in either the FSM or the Marshalls and, in fact, seems like an improbable hope. Still, as people consider the possibility of the need for eventual climate-driven migration, all countries that have relations with these small Pacific islands would do well to invest in front end preparation in education, health and life skills training that would offer any out-migration a better chance of success.
