Science Friday - SciFri Extra: The Marshall Islands Stare Down Rising Seas

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

The Republic of the Marshall Islands is a country of 58,000 people spread across 29 coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean. And in a world where seas are both rising and acidifying, the Marshall Islands are exceptionally vulnerable: Those atolls rise a mere two meters above the original ocean height on average, and rely on the health and continued growth of their coral foundations to exist. A 2018 study projects that by 2050, the Marshall Islands could be mostly uninhabitable due to salt-contaminated groundwater and inundation of large swaths of their small land masses during both storm events and more regular high tides. But the people of the Marshall Islands—who are already facing increasingly high king tides and more frequent droughts—are planning to adapt, not leave. They've already built sea walls and water catchments, while in February 2019, then-Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine announced an ambitious, expensive additional plan to raise the islands higher above the ocean. Science Friday producer Christie Taylor spoke to Heine in October, after her remarks to the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science in Honolulu, Hawaii. They discussed the islands' adaptation plans, why leaving is the last option the Marshallese want to consider, and the role traditional knowledge has played in planning for the future. Plus, why major carbon emitters like the United States have a responsibility to help countries like the Marshall Islands adapt.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hi there, I were here with something extra for you. Last week on our Degrees of Change series, we talked about the ways indigenous communities are adapting to climate change where they live. One of those communities is the Marshall Islands, an island nation that is on the front lines of sea level rise. It's two dozen atolls rising only two meters above the ocean already. Late last year, Science Friday producer Christy Taylor had a chance to catch up with Hilda Hiney, the past president of the Marshall Islands. And in this interview, we're going to play for you today.

Hiney spoke about how climate change is already affecting the islands, how her country has already started to adapt, and why it's so important that the Marshallese people be able to stay right where they are for as long as possible. Take a listen. Until January, Dr. Hilda Hiney was the president of the Marshall Islands. She was the first woman elected to the presidency there and the first person from the Marshall Islands to earn a doctorate degree, a PhD in education. Hainey spent her time in office advocating for her people and other Pacific island nations on the global stage. The Marshall Islands are among the most vulnerable to sea level rise, consisting of more than two dozen coral atolls, mere feet above sea

level, on a good day. Already the islands have experienced catastrophic floods and, on the flip side, an increasing number of droughts. Climate change is threatening infrastructure, agriculture, and their entire way of life. Last October, President Hiney addressed a packed auditorium at the Honolulu meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Chicano's and Native Americans in science, Sackness. In her remarks, she touched on the legacy of the more than 60 U.S. nuclear weapons tests in the region, including the bombing of Bikini Atoll, and the responsibility of bigger countries with larger carbon footprints to help countries like hers adapt, She talked about how forcing the marshalese to leave their land and flee rising seas would destroy their identity as a culture. But even as we rise to the challenges of the pledges we have made, including our commitments to the Paris Agreement,

we fear that nature threatens to sink us. We fear that our fellow men and women will not adjust their destructive behaviors in a timely fashion. We fear that the world will not know this if we sink. It is my hope that the global community can summon the leadership needed to urgently increase its ambition to get us on a pathway consistent with the Paris Agreement and to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. I caught up with her later the same day to ask her about the island's plan for adaptation and how indigenous knowledge and traditional practices,

can be part of securing their future. Yes, my name is Hilda Hainey, and I'm currently the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands are already experiencing flooding. But Hiney was also quick to point out that rising seas and increasing droughts did more than damage infrastructure. They're also a health problem,

and they can disrupt entire community routines. It's not just the physical problem that we see, but we also see impacts on health and education. For example, we see more people when there is flooding or when there is drought, there are more sick people because of the lack of drinking water or safe drinking water so we get stomach problems more. We're having issues with nutrition because the climate impacts are food plants. And so as that happens, that impact on the nutrition for our people. So it's those kinds of impacts that we're seeing.

Sometimes when we have drought and there is not enough water, we have to close the schools down. So that impacts on education because that means no more school for the kids for while they're needing to look for water or food during these types of crisis. So I think those are issues that you don't necessarily see, but they're there. And so we need to do a much better job of capturing the data and actually showing what's happening with. with these impacts. We also talked about coral reefs. This was, after all, in October, while the Hawaiian coral reefs were in the middle of a bleaching event,

thanks to weeks of high ocean temperatures. And Hiney said the Marshall Islands reefs have been suffering too, but without resources, it's hard to tell how much or where to pinpoint restoration and adaptation efforts. We're noticing great impacts from climate change. There is a lot of course acidification and as the water gets warmer, we see the coral reefs dying out. We are looking at having an assessment done to determine where these coral impacts are found,

what communities where, how extensive that is, so that we can begin to do adaptation, including coral growth and replanting on reefs, to make sure that the corals are regenerated. we need to do that. Again, it's a lack of resources that is holding the plan from going forward in terms of a national assessment on coral impacts. Haini said the loss of coral would endanger the fish that her people rely on for food. But also, in a nation comprised mainly of atolls, the reefs are the Marshall Islands. The corals are the breathing grounds for our marine resources. If the coral go, then a lot of our marine life will also go with them. And we depend on the marine life to sustain ourselves, their food for us.

But at the same time, coral is also needed to grow the islands. Without coral, the islands will not be there. So we need to make sure that that doesn't happen. For Hainey, the idea of retreating from rising seas is last resort. The land itself is an important foundation to marshalese. identity. What happens to countries like the Marshall Islands and other other at all nations, if they are truly going to be submerged, what happens to their coastal, what do you call zone, economic zone, what happens to that? Do we lose that?

That's one issue. What happened to the people, you know, the culture, because we depend on the land for our culture. It's very much intricate, as I mentioned in my speech today. many of the activities that are part of our culture, they do emanate from our activities on the land. And so without that, you know, we're, you know, the culture is going to be lost. Most of or everyone in the Marshall Islands has a connection to a piece of land in the Marshall Island.

That's their home. And so without that, it's like, you know, what are we? We don't have a home to come to. But most importantly, I think it's the loss of the culture. and the language along with it when we lose the land base. Instead of leaving, Hiney said, the islands are working to adapt. The government has built sea walls, is collecting water ahead of the more frequent droughts, and hopes to raise the islands higher above the sea.

But in a country of only 53,000 people, with a gross domestic product of $200 million per year, raising your islands is expensive. Currently, because of limited resources, we're focusing on what we can pay for, including, and as I mentioned in my talk this morning, we've done sea walls around the islands. We built water catchments to help communities through droughts that we're getting on a more regular basis than before. Those are some of the adaptation efforts that we've been able to do

in the last couple of years. As we move forward, we're working on our national adaptation plan, which will take a look at what do we need to do going forward. If the science is right and the water will come over our islands, we need to have plans for the future. We certainly don't want to move from the Marshall Islands. That's not our goal. So we need to make sure that we remain there as long as we can. So part of the plans are to look at possible

raising of islands in order to ensure that communities can remain there as long as we can. During her public remarks that day, Hainey made another point. The Marshall Islands, once the site of the United States nuclear weapons testing on Bikini Atoll, are still suffering health problems from that radioactive legacy. And as the seas rise, the waters threatening to flood a domed waste storage site on Runeid Island. I asked her if she felt the U.S., one of the world's top emitters of carbon dioxide, had an outsized responsibility to help the Marshall Islands finance their survival plan. She said yes.

They definitely do have a responsibility, and that's one of the important and ongoing dialogue that we continue to have with the United States. Of course, our discussion with the U.S. has been through the government. We feel that we need to also bring along the public, because the public does not necessarily understand what happened. and the extent of the damage that was done to the people. And so part of our advocacy is getting that information out to the community so that the support can be brought to bear with Congressional representatives

because that is exactly where we will be going if we are going to be requesting assistance, financial assistance. So we need the support of the public. We also need to cultivate support on the hill along with the public as well. This is something that we've never done before in the past. We've just gone to the Congress and hope that the legislations will be passed to remedy some of the concerns that we've highlighted. I also asked her what other institutions could be stepping up more. And she said businesses, especially those with a large role in carbon emissions. She said they had the potential to bring solutions as long as they understand they can still be profitable.

Certainly the business community is a sector that needs to be part of the conversation. I think they bring quite a big chunk of the issue and the solutions. And so I think we need to work with the private sector more in ways that they would understand and in ways that they would realize that work. and assisting with the climate crisis does not mean less business for them. And so I think that's an area that we need to focus on as well. In addition to, of course, the young people coming up, you know, through universities and other educational institutions and organizations.

The Marshallese people are also looking to their own culture as they adapt to this very new threat. Heine pointed to a process called Ramanlock, a cooperative exercise that combines indigenous environmental knowledge with Western conservation planning to prepare for a future of change. I've talked about our REMLAR backlog process, which is really what it means is looking forward, but it's also engaging local communities in the process of looking at individual communities because they're all different.

They have different needs and have different way of dealing with issues that they face. And so the importance of bringing along people and not just, government telling them how and where and what they should be doing is important in the Ramallah process in order to make sure that whatever plans that are put in place to mitigate or do adapt are owned by the communities. And so this is what we're doing as we move forward to try to look at adapting and developing resilient communities. And at the end of the day, Heine said, as she's been traveling the world to advocate for more global action, she's drawn her own optimism from the reactions of the people she's met.

We cannot do any of the plans that we have been thinking about and envisioning without the support of the international community. And that's part of my advocacy. As I go around the world to talk to people, is to create understanding and also, yeah, it is create understanding and awareness of what's happening because sometimes we're too complacent. And we're okay where we are and we don't see what's happening around the world.

But in all of this, I base my belief in the common humanity. I think people have a sense of responsibility if they know and understand what's happening. And so our responsibility is to make sure that people know. We cannot just sit back and expect others to take ownership of the issue. If we don't bring the information to them, make sure that they know. Once that is done, I believe, as I said, common humanity, we have, each other and we usually come forward when we know and understand the issues. So that's where I base my optimism. After all, she said, what's happening in the Marshall Islands is just the beginning

of a process that is touching the entire globe. I think it's important for people to know that whatever will happen to the Marshall Islands, we're the first one to be impacted, but it will happen to other countries and other communities. So I don't, I don't, I, I, I want people to know that this is not an isolated case, that it is something that all of us, humanity needs to take care of. Thank you. That was Marshall Islands former president Hilda Hiney, who I spoke to in October last year. In November, she lost her bid for re-election, though incoming President David Kibuya has said

adapting to climate change would also be a priority for him as he takes his place in governing the Marshall Islands. Hiney remains in the Marshallese government as a member of the 33-member parliament. You can hear Hine's full speech to the Society for the Advancement of Chicano's and Native Americans in Science on our website, ScienceFriiday.com slash Marshall Islands. And if you're not subscribed to the Science Friday podcast feed yet, make sure you get on that for access to more extra interviews and other stories like this. Lastly, if you have comments or things you'd like to see, leave us a message. Find us on Twitter at SciFri. Email SciFri at ScienceFriD.com or download the SciFriVoxpop app and leave us a voice message.

In New York, I'm Christy Taylor.