Going down
Tuvalu, a nation of nine islands -
specks in the South Pacific - is in
danger of vanishing, a victim of
global warming. As their homeland
is battered by ferocious cyclones
and slowly submerges under the
encroaching sea, what will become
of the islanders?
Patrick Barkham
Saturday February 16, 2002
The Guardian
guardian.co.uk
The dazzling white sand and dark green
coconut palms of Tepuka Savilivili were
much like those on dozens of other small
islets within sight of Funafuti, the atoll
capital of Tuvalu. But shortly after
cyclones Gavin, Hina and Kelly had paid
the tiny Pacific nation a visit, islanders
looked across Funafuti's coral lagoon and
noticed a gap on the horizon. Tepuka
Savilivili had vanished. Fifty hectares of
Tuvalu disappeared into the sea during the
1997 storms. The tiny country's precious
10 square miles of land were starting to
disappear.
Five years on, the government of Tuvalu
has noticed many such troubling changes
on its nine inhabited islands and
concluded that, as one of the smallest
and lowest-lying countries in the world, it
is destined to become the first nation
sunk by global warming. The evidence
before their own eyes - and forecasts for a
rise in sea level of up to 88cm in the next
century made by international scientists -
has convinced most of Tuvalu's 10,500
inhabitants that rising seas and more
frequent violent storms are certain to
make life unliveable on the islands, if not
for them, then for their children. A deal
has been signed with New Zealand, in
which 75 Tuvaluans will be resettled there
each year, starting now. As the vast
expanse of the Pacific Ocean creeps up
on to Tuvalu's doorstep, the evacuation
and shutting down of a nation has begun.
With the curtains closed against the
tropical glare, the prime minister, Koloa
Talake, works in a flimsy Portakabin at
the lagoon's edge on Funafuti. Tuvalu's
largest island is a crowded,
uninhabitable-looking line in the ocean,
smaller than Hampstead Heath in London.
You are never more than 150 metres from
the sea and the air has a permanently
salty tang. Talake, who sits at his desk
wearing flip-flops and bears a passing
resemblance to Nelson Mandela, likens
his task to the captain of a ship: "The
skipper of the boat is always the last man
to leave a sinking ship or goes down with
the ship. If that happens to Tuvalu, the
prime minister will be the last person to
leave the island."
Talake realises that his government
cannot simply order people off the islands,
but must balance the continued
development of the country - embracing
sealed roads, telephones and the internet
- with the precautionary evacuation of the
most vulnerable. The prospect of rising
seas or tropical storms engulfing their
nation has left Tuvalu's deeply Christian
people grappling with a fear of the ocean,
a belief that God won't flood their land,
and anxiety that their culture might not
survive transplantation to a developed
western nation such as New Zealand.
The highest point on Tuvalu is just four
metres above sea level. From the air, its
islands are thin slashes of green against
the aquamarine water. From a few miles
out at sea, the nation's numerous tiny
uninhabited islets look smaller than a
container ship and soon slip below the
horizon. On a map, the islands are
pinpricks south of the equator, only visible
because the international dateline does
them the courtesy of swerving east to
avoid them. A Spanish explorer spotted
an island in the 16th century, but it was
another 200 years before storms pitched
the first missionary on to Tuvalu's coral
atolls, which were named the Ellice
Islands and subsumed into the British
Empire.
Hardly any tourists take the 22-seater
plane from Fiji that touches down at
Funafuti twice a week (travel agents think
you're having a laugh when you quote the
airport code: Fun). For the rest of the
week, islanders sleep on the runway at
night (where they can enjoy a cooling
breeze), and pigs, bicycles and games of
football and rugby traverse the airstrip by
day. Eight of Tuvalu's nine inhabited
islands have no cars or internet. Daily life
on Tuvalu revolves around the ocean. It is
the islands' garden, washroom, swimming
pool and slaughterhouse. As dawn quickly
rises on the island, men and women
stand neck-deep in the sea, eating fish
and bits of coconut, or periodically raising
pans they are silently scrubbing beneath
the surface of the water. At midday, a
father and son heave four pigs into the
lagoon for slicing up; the pigs'
slashed-open bellies turn the water red
and their entrails drift off on the ocean. At
dusk, islanders gather on motorbikes to
watch the sunset from the low concrete
jetties jutting out into the lagoon. Children
slide down algae-covered boat ramps into
the water and a man clutches a fish the
size of a dog to his chest.
The Pacific Ocean brings relative
prosperity. Tuvalu sells licences
permitting the US, Japan and others to
fish in its 350,000sq miles of territorial
waters. Money is bringing change - and
lots of motorbikes. Most islanders stand
with one foot in the cash economy and
one in the traditional realm of subsistence
farming and fishing. Extended families live
together, with some members tending a
small pen of pigs or dropping a line from a
boat to fish for their suppers, while others
bring in a wage by working for the
government, or go overseas to study at
the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.
Education is greatly valued, and the
island's only ship spends much of its time
ferrying young Tuvaluans to the second
largest island Vaitupu, where girls and
boys board at the country's only
secondary school.
Many of the nation's young lads then join
the maritime training school, a thriving
government enterprise that teaches
modern shipping lore. Employment
agencies snap up the young Tuvaluans,
who are renowned for their knowledge of
the ocean, work ethic and strength. At
any one time, more than 600 Tuvaluan
men are labouring on container ships at
sea. The money sent home by
family-minded Tuvaluan sailors has trebled
to more than A$4m (£1.5m) in the past
three years.
Islanders still fish around Tuvalu in small
wooden boats and every year several go
missing, drifting to oblivion after losing
sight of their low-lying land. "Personally, I
am very worried about sea-level rising,
because I don't want to be caught.
Drowning is a dreadful death," says
Talake, motioning with his hand to
indicate the waters rising above his neck.
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