A federal judge on Thursday ruled that American Samoans are citizens by birth. This is a landmark judgment considering the risk that American Samoa faces due to climate change. This judgment segues into a broader question – Do western industrialized nations owe a responsibility towards smaller and weaker nations/territories at the forefront of climate change? Part of the answer to this lies in history and the rest in the present attitude of western nations. We shall focus our study on the Pacific Island region as they face immediate danger due to climate change and are sufficiently small so that they lack the necessary resources to combat climate change by themselves.
History
All the countries in the region of Oceania were colonized by the industrialized nations. The map shows the empires and their colonies in Oceania as of September 1st, 1939.
Like anywhere else, the imperial rule in this region brought with it conflict with the locals and destruction of the local culture and administration system. In 1927, the British forces stationed in the Solomon Islands killed at least 60 locals, incarcerated 200 others and desecrated ancestral shrines in what became known as the Malaita Massacre. Such stories of atrocities were common across the region.
The principal reason for the colonization of these islands was strategic and economic. They served as important trading posts. However, in some cases, these islands were also exploited for their resources. The island of Kiribati was rich in phosphate and the British operated a phosphate company in Banaba, Kiribati, that was involved in mining and extraction.
The consequences of colonization can be felt even today. The industrial activity that followed colonization caused extensive damage to the island ecosystem. In the case of Kiribati, the phosphate mining activity changed the landscape entirely. Earlier it was 80 meters above the sea-level. After the mining activities, it came down by around 20 – 30 meters.
In addition to the environmental damage, and perhaps more importantly, colonization brought with it large demographic changes in these regions. The mining activity in Kiribati resulted in a large scale resettlement of local Banaba population to the neighboring Rabi island. Similarly, the British colonization of Fiji led to an influx of a large number of Indians. These demographic shifts continue to be a source of tension within the region and put a strain on the already limited resources.
It is clear that the island nations in Oceania, that stand to lose the most, are already handicapped in their efforts against climate change.
Current Assistance
The industrialized nations are reaching out to the island nations in Oceania in order to aid them in the fight against climate change. France, Australia, and New Zealand signed the FRANZ arrangement in 1992 that would enable the three countries to coordinate relief operations in pacific island nations in case of a natural disaster. To date, the three nations have carried out successful relief operations in Fiji, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Niue, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Papua New Guinea.
The island nations in Oceania also receive significant development aid that largely comes from western developed nations. But the question is – Is that enough?
Dr. Carol Betzold of the Institute of Development Policy and Management at the University of Antwerp in Belgium studied the development aid given to pacific island nations. She analyzed what percentage of the development assistance was designated to deal with and adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change. This type of aid was categorized as “adaptation aid”.
Her findings are summarized in the following graph:
The graph clearly shows that the adaptive assistance is not nearly close to the levels that it should be. The few tall – columns that we see in the graph are due to individual projects whose primary purpose may not even be adaptation. On average, the adaptation aid comes down to just $26 for each pacific islander.
The Road Ahead
It is evident that the developed world needs to do much more in order to aid the island nations in Oceania. One way is to increase the development assistance significantly. However, this may be too little too late for some island nations. The situation in some islands is so dire that the local governments are laying down plans for relocation. The island nation of Kiribati purchased 8 square miles of land in Fiji so as to relocate its population when their island becomes inhabitable. Similarly, Papua New Guinea has started moving the population of Carteret Islands to the mainland.
The other and more radical way is to grant asylum to the natives of the pacific island nations. This might be a hard sell for the domestic population, but the leaders of the developed nations must find a way. In addition, the population size of the pacific island nations is tiny as compared to that of the developed European countries. The population of all the pacific island nations combined is about 2.3 million, which is just 3 percent of the population of the United Kingdom.
The developed nations of today, that built their fortune on a foundation of colonization, owe a debt to the pacific islanders. After destroying their ecosystem and causing large scale demographic changes, the least that the developed nations can do is provide a home to those displaced by climate change.