Climate change is here, but action lags
The remarkable thing about climate change in the Pacific is this: if meetings and conferences were an indication of action, then the islands should be winning the battle. Instead, pledges of billions of dollars for climate “resilience” and “mitigation” remain largely a mirage, while the big polluters that have caused the climate crisis continue business as usual. Occasional promises to reduce carbon emissions invariably gets derailed by political vagaries—or elections, such as the governments in Australia and New Zealand that have beat a retreat from climate action of earlier governments.
Some things are happening, of course, but they tend to be exceptions to the rule.
In the past several weeks, the Federated States of Micronesia was in the news for adopting what is being touted as the Pacific region’s first domestic climate legislation. The FSM’s recently passed legislation requires that national and state government offices responsible for the environment, disaster management, transportation, infrastructure, health, education and finance, mainstream climate adaptation in all their policies and action plans.
Other countries in the region are in the early stages of drafting climate-specific legislation. Palau officials told me earlier in the month that legislation is currently being drafted. In the Marshalls there is no legislation under development, but parliament Speaker Donald Capelle attended earlier this month the World Summit of Legislators in Mexico, which was focused on looking at climate change laws and rules—specifically, what is the role of national legislation in a post-2020 climate change agreement? Parliament officials in Majuro say they are hopeful of developing national legislation in the near future.
There is a draft bill before the Cabinet in the Marshall Islands for the establishment of a new Ministry for Climate Change, Environment, Energy and Conservation—which would consolidate all climate and energy offices under one roof, but this has been under discussion now for over two years without being introduced to the parliament.
We regularly read about donor funds being available for projects aimed at boosting climate resilience and mitigation, but just a small amount of money seems to be flowing into the islands. The Marshall Islands, like neighboring atoll nations Kiribati and Tuvalu, can legitimately lay claim to being on the front line of climate and sea level rise effects.
High tide events since 2008 (though there have been others prior to this) have caused significant and repeated damage to homes and businesses and government facilities on the ocean side of Majuro and other atolls in the country. Extended dry periods have also taken their toll, prompting aid agencies to respond with emergency and long-term assistance. Despite a seeming increase in flooding incidents, as well as ongoing coastal erosion that is destroying shoreline cemeteries, there has yet to be a single government-sponsored “climate” response, such as shoreline revetment or seawalls in the lowest areas prone to constant flooding. Nor is there any attempt made at urban zoning, with landowners given, by default, authority for allowing homes of any type, from shacks to concrete block buildings, to be built on even the most tenuous of coastal outcroppings.
In fact, the only significant climate funding—other than funding for workshops and travel to get to workshops—has been a grant from the SPREP/UNDP-managed Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change project with funds from the Global Environment Facility as well as Australia and the United States. This provided funding to re-line fresh water reservoirs in Majuro and provide covers to reduce loss of rainwater, which provides 95 percent of the fresh water on the atoll. A second element of the same grant is providing solar pumps and panels to outer island dispensaries that will be used to convert groundwater into safe drinking water.
It is also remarkable that in light of known weather patterns in the Marshalls—January to April is very dry—more long-term solutions for fresh water availability have not been implemented. Instead, last year when an extended dry period hit the northern islands, donor agencies rushed bottles of water and small reverse osmosis water makers to these islands. Yet Utrik Atoll has had a functioning solar and wind-powered large RO system in operation for nearly four years. Utrik is alone among northern islands in the Marshalls: when the rains stop four-to-six months of the year, Utrik has adequate potable water because of the large RO unit. Yet this system has not been cloned for other islands, which continue to suffer from extended dry periods, with a possible major drought looming at the end of this year from a brewing El Niño.
Most small islands have little capacity to coordinate multiple donor projects, let alone navigate the labyrinth of donor applications and reporting requirements. And indeed a paradox of small islands is how bureaucracies defeat coordination among government offices. In the Marshalls recently, one government staffer posted a comment on Facebook critical of other government offices for traveling to multiple climate and energy conferences when they are not involved in domestic implementation. The point: there is a big disconnect between people traveling to climate meetings and action on the home front.
Very possibly the disconnect is the result of government people being more focused on attending the next climate meeting than they are on developing and implementing work at the community level.
