Unbelievably there are still some people who refuse to accept climate change and the devastating effects but there is no such argument on the island of Kiribati in the Pacific Coast because the sea is rising at a rate of 1.2cm a year and they have made arrangements of how to deal with the inevitable taking back of the land by the sea.
The country has purchased a 20-square-kilometre chunk of forest on the Fijian island of Vanau Levu for £8.8 million ready for any evacuation of the 103,000 residents due to rising sea levels.
'We would hope not to put everyone on this one piece of land, but if it became absolutely necessary, yes, we could do it' Kiribati President Anote Tong said as he explained the many climate-related challenges his island faces including increasing salt pollution in its freshwater supplies, changing weather and storm patterns as well as the rising ocean.
Some villages on Kiribati have already been flooded out and the President estimates that his country only has 30-60 years left before it becomes uninhabitable leading him to pursue migration initiatives.
The IPCC agree that many smaller islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans risk being totally or mostly submerged in just the next few decades by rising sea levels with places like Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands under the greatest threat.
The movement of these people from low lying lands could be a foreshadow of what to come as the IPCC warns that by 2050, global warming will displace as many as 700 million people from the effects of rising sea levels and desertification.
Just a small taste of things to come but humans moving to higher ground to avoid the effects of the damage we have wreaked on the globe has started.
2 comments:
20 years x 1.2cm is 24cm which is a tad over 9". If you built the pier you might want to check the measurements again!
Post a Comment