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Articles Ecological Breakdown and Response

Focus Greenland – Wildfires, record ‘melts’ and boggy permafrost

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By Kate Goldstone

*    http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/greenland-population/

**  us-all-82675

***

“In some places climate change is an undeniable fact of everyday life. One of these places is Greenland.” – Visit Greenland.  (link to )

Greenland is the world’s biggest island. It’s a Danish territory that enjoys limited self-government and has its own parliament. In 2018 just 56,000 people lived there*, not a lot. So does it really matter if climate change melts the ice that smothers this extraordinarily wild, remote place? As it turns out, a fast-melting Greenland will have a dramatic effect on the rest of the world. Here’s a quick look at the potential damage caused by global warming in Greenland.

Climate change – Greenland in context**

Greenland’s vast ice sheet covers 80% of the island, acting like an enormous mirror reflecting the sun’s heat back out into space. The resulting ‘Albedo effect’ cools the earth’s surface. When there’s no snow, there’s no Albedo effect and the surface of the earth warms faster.

Greenland’s position on the globe, in the North Atlantic, matters as well, since the meltwater affects the normal circulation of the ocean currents. And it matters even more when you consider most of the island’s ice is more than a kilometre deep. That’s an awful lot of water. As Wikipedia says***, if the entire 2,850,000 cubic kilometres of Greenland’s ice were to melt, global sea levels would rise 7.2m (24 feet), leaving many of the world’s greatest coastal cities, including London and New York, underwater.

Greenland is particularly vulnerable to climate change. In fact temperatures in the Arctic are rising at twice the rate of the global average, and not a month seems to go by without some weather record or another being broken. One of the most recent was a proper shocker, a highly unusual and very large wildfire whose cause has been laid at the feet of global warming. The drier the land gets, the more runaway wildfires we’ll see in Greenland.

It looks like some frightening climate-led trends are emerging in Greenland. Take the fourteen years between 2002 and 2016, when Greenland lost around 269 gigatonnes of ice every year, one gigatonne being a billion tonnes. In 2012 they saw an exceptionally severe melting season, with 97% of ice surfaces melting at one time or another through the year. When the snow actually melted on top of the 3km high summit of the island, scientists were astonished.

The big warm-up carries on. April 2016 delivered abnormally high temperatures and the island’s earliest ever ‘melt’, a day when more than 10% of the ice sheet’s entire surface turned to water. While early melts like this aren’t catastrophic, they do reveal how very quickly and dramatically the ice sheet responds to temperature hikes.

Iceland’s permafrost is thawing at its top level, leaving more and more of the island boggy, damp, and perfect for disease-carrying mosquitoes.  The underlying permafrost reaches as deep as 100m and while it’s permanently frozen right now, there’s no reason to believe it’ll stay that way. The molten ‘active’ layer of permafrost is currently growing by around one and a half centimetres a year, a trend that’ll continue unless we start to reverse climate change.

Experts predict Arctic air temperatures will rise by anything from two degrees Centigrade and seven and a half Centigrade by the end of the century, revealing more than 1,500 billion tonnes of organic matter that has remained frozen solid for many thousands of years… until now. Melting it means the CO2 and methane it contains will be released into the atmosphere to cause yet more global warming.

Glaciers tell us a lot. Following their movement is a reliable way to spot climate change in action.  The magnificent Ilulissat Glacier, in West Greenland, is the world’s fastest moving glacier and Greenland’s biggest contributor to worldwide sea level rise.  May 2008 saw it ‘calve’ the biggest chunk of ice ever recorded on film, an event lasting more than an hour that left a vast three-mile-wide scar. Early 2019 saw even worse news emerge, with a study showing that the biggest ice losses between 2003 and 2013 happening in the south west of the island, hinting that ice is melting directly into the sea, via rivers, avoiding becoming part of the glacier altogether.   

Last but never least, polar bears. Since 1979 the sea ice around Greenland has decreased by just under seven and a half percent, which is already badly affecting polar bears. Scientists predict a 30% drop in polar bear numbers over the next few decades, leaving us with fewer than 9,000 of these precious creatures left on earth.

We’ll leave the last word to the Visit Greenland website: “The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, and is experiencing some of the most intense effects of climate change, with southwest Greenland seeing the most rapid warming (about 3°C during the past 7 years). In July 2013, the temperature at Maniitsoq airport, just beneath the Arctic Circle in west Greenland, was recorded at 25.9°C. This is the highest temperature ever recorded in Greenland.”

Greenland might be home to fewer than 60,000 people. But the effects of climate change on the island will have an impact on us all, wherever on our lovely blue planet we happen to live. Politicians have failed miserably. Now it’s down to us to bring global warming to an end.

Articles Ecological Breakdown and Response Regenerative Culture

To Power

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By Matt Byrne

In 2015, I was working in Mariupol, Ukraine, setting up office and rolling out a humanitarian response to the ugly, harsh and continuing conflict in the Donbass. Daily our team would trek towards the ‘line of contact’ separating the two warring sides, passing kilometres of WWII style trenches, and heavily fortified checkpoints packed with Ukrainian soldiers, who would go give our vehicles a quick once over before letting us through. Invariably, we found that those still living on the frontline, in their bullet pocked and shell-mangled houses, were the elderly and people with disabilities. Those, who by their own admission, had nowhere else to go, this was their home.  At night, over a beer, we would listen to the shelling less than 15 kilometres away as the two sides delighted in keeping each other up all night. 

In my spare
time, my chosen reading material was This
Changes Everything by Naomi Klein. As I looked up from the pages of the book,
out of my window to the industrial skyline of the city, ringed as it is by
steel and chemical works all across the horizon and the port to the Azov Sea to
the south, I noted the light film of black soot that covered my window sill if
I left it open for the day, the giant chimney stacks perpetually spewing smoke and
the soapy film that ran down the middle of the street every time it rained.
Needless to say, I didn’t get very far with the book. It was all too much for
me, the people of Mariupol were getting a raw deal, short-changed from all
sides. I already felt small, adding climate change to the mix, made me feel
powerless, useless.

Watching XR take
off and command global attention, seeing non-violent civil disobedience do
exactly what it is intended to do, is changing that sense of powerlessness
inside me. Hearing the flimsy response of the UK authorities that police are
being diverted from ‘violent crime’ in order to manage the blockades by the
rebels or reading academics who recommend ‘tea fetes’ as a more viable tactic
to obtain sympathetic public opinion is a testament to the work of the movement
thus far. In these feather-ruffled responses, I hear a call for business as
usual. But the courage of the rebels has been heard and noted with the various
declarations of a climate emergency in the UK, the Committee on Climate Change’s report for a net zero carbon free UK by 2050
that they are pushing to be signed into law now, and the global surge of
protest movements demanding change. These are revolutionary times we live in
and it appears that a global wake-up call from the streets has put the heat
under the decision makers.   

In 1968, Howard
Zinn, wrote ‘this is why civil disobedience is not just to be tolerated; if we
are to have a truly democratic society, it is a necessity. By its nature it reflects the intensity of feeling about
important issues as well as the extent of the feeling.’ He was writing about those
who risked and endured incarceration by objecting to the Vietnam War but his
words are as valid today as they were then, if not more so. The CCC pointed to
the level of intensity seen in the recent protests as part of its advocacy for
cutting carbon emissions to zero starting today.

Recently, I have
participated in on UN led sessions monitoring progress towards the 2030
Sustainable development goals. Climate change and the need for action has not
been neglected in these discussions. That said, as I observe the member states
and participating agencies wrangle over terminology and monitoring indicators,
I am struck by how this is also business as usual, very well intentioned
business but far from the revolutionary type required given the emergency
timeframe we are living in. The urgency is lacking.  So, back we go to Zinn, who concluded; “A new
politics of protest, designed to put pressure on our national leaders, more
effectively, more threateningly, more forcefully than ever before is needed”.
The streets rose up, the urgency appeared.

That said, I
also realise to be effective you need to have rebels on the so-called ‘inside’
and ‘outside.’ You need networks of influence that punctuate all levels of the
political and justice systems. You need networks that represent the full gamut
of those affected by climate change; youth, the global south, diversity,
ethnicity, the dispossessed. We also have to mobilise ourselves against
emergent threats such as fossil fuel dominated Climate Leadership Council which lobbies for legal immunity from cases taken
against them for climate and environmental damages caused by their actions.

Rolling town
hall meetings were an instrumental part of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign
mobilizing the great surge in grass roots support for his candidacy. Coming
from Ireland, I have watched in admiration, the great societal leaps spurred
through the debates and decisions taken by a national level citizen’s assembly.
Public support can be mobilized and maintained through a campaign of holding local
level citizens assemblies and XR has chosen its tactics wisely by adopting
them.

I may be too
much of a dreamer but guerrilla tactics that provide a social service like
providing renewable energy to underserved public services (like hospitals or
clinics) in marginalized areas can also drive the message home to people that
there is a climate emergency and the system is failing us now, not at some
unspecified point in the distant future. The clandestine Gap organization in
Rome is exactly this, a vigilante group performing ‘illegal’ acts of repair to
the cities crumbling infrastructure. Partnership with renewable energy providers,
if they were willing to take the risk and it appears that a number of
businesses are, could be an interesting mechanism for responding to some of the
manifold grievances that are sure to be raised in the citizens assemblies that
link climate injustice to social neglect and marginalization.  

The people
living in Mariupol, still live with ongoing conflict, landmines, shelling,
dispossession, loss of income, loss of family members, restrictions on movement
and hostage to an unhealthy, toxic environment. They have innumerable daily
challenges to confront but with nowhere else to go it is still their home. This
is our home, we have nowhere else to go. We will not be victims, if we stand
together, we are strong, a better future awaits.

I am inspired and
forever grateful to those that took to the streets globally to demand exactly
that.

Articles News

Scotland Needs System Change, Not Climate Change, by Ian Paterson

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We are a proud people, in Scotland. To what extend varies from person to person, but it’s a common Scottish characteristic and one that, at times, is a hindrance when addressing political issues.

There are sections of Scottish society who will not accept any criticism of the Scottish Government and this prevents a healthy level of scrutiny over much of its policy.

We have developed a narrative that plays into our desire to be seen as a modern and progressive nation, but we need comprehensive political system change badly in Scotland, of the type described by XR Founding member, Stuart Basden recently.

After staging our mock Citizens Assembly and occupying the Scottish Parliament, the BBC sought comment from a Scottish Government source and true to form the response came back that:

“The UN has praised the Scottish Government for our progress in dealing with Climate Change”.

Let’s just take an unbiased look at that record.

The fairest measurement is CO2 per capita – this way small countries can be compared to large ones, in a robust and fair way.

Scots output net 4.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per person, per year, according to the cited data sheet (one page) from the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (2016).

So, is Scotland in the top-ten least polluting countries per capita?

No.

Is it in the top 100?

No.

Scotland lies at 147th out of 217 bespoke countries or territories.

The UK as a whole is 170th…

If Scotland is in the worst third of countries for CO2 pollution, why does it get so much praise?

It is true that Scotland’s pollution levels used to be higher and it has reduced somewhat over the past two decades.

In doing so however, the Scottish Government have adopted an approach of providing much of our energy needs from green sources, whilst still supporting tax-subsidised North Sea oil drilling and sale of oil to foreign countries, so the pollution is attributed elsewhere, when the oil is burned.

We live in a relatively unpopulated country, meaning we have large swathes of natural land that contribute to CO2 mitigation and reduce our figures in a net carbon model.

In Scotland’s plan for Independence, prepared for the 2014 referendum, known as the ‘White Paper’, written by the Scottish Government, the document mentions oil 80 times. It was made clear that oil was central to any plan for Independence.

The plan was narrowly rejected 45% to 55% because it wasn’t comprehensively convincing, not because it was based on the destruction of our environment.

Whilst the SNP are the party of government in Scotland currently, it has to be said that if either of the two potential alternatives were in power – the Scottish Conservatives or Scottish Labour – that any deviation from a pro-oil stance would be highly unlikely.

The tone might differ, with the SNP claiming oil is vital to Scottish autonomy, the Tories voicing their support for oil business and Labour stating their support for oil-sector workers and jobs – but support would remain.

It is currently the policy of the Scottish Government to abolish Air Passenger Duty. This policy will make it cheaper for airlines to fly in and out of Scotland, and will reduce demand for greener forms of transport, along with reducing motivation for airlines to use less-polluting aircraft.

This is a clear statement of intent, to put the Scottish economy before environmental concerns.

It begs the question, does the Scottish Government value money above all else?

After reviewing how many lobbyist meetings have taken place in recent years, I would challenge every MSP to address their clear and obvious corruption.

Value does not come
from how we are viewed on the world stage or by others but how we
evaluate ourselves. For that reason, we cannot accept false praise,
generated because we are gaming the system. We must not defend our
government blindly, when it is not working in the interests of its
people, but for commerce.

This is why a Citizens Assembly in Scotland is an imperative, to discuss climate inaction (and indeed to fairly tackle lingering questions of Independence and devolution too).

Holyrood must become the people’s parliament, which it emphatically is not, right now.

We must challenge our rose-tinted view, for our own health as much as for the sake of others. We are already beginning to see huge devastation in Global South countries, which are less polluting but more vulnerable than we are.

That’s on us.

To deny it is to condemn huge swathes of the global population to perish, at our expense.

For more information on the latest published statistics (38 pages), from 2016, please see here.

Citizens' Assemblies Ecological Breakdown and Response News XR Glasgow

XR Glasgow Report

Published by:

By Ian Paterson

Extinction Rebellion Glasgow formed in November 2018, and took our first actions the following month, including disrupting Christmas shopping by swarming in Style Mile shopfronts, and forcing BBC Scotland to close their front doors due to our Reclaim the BBC demonstration.

 XR Glasgow aren’t where we want to be yet, but things are starting to come together and we are on track to deliver a strong contribution during the International Rebellion of 15th–19th April 2019. Affinity groups are forming, with XR Glasgow students organising a Youth Strike on Feb 15th, and XR Glasgow is staging a mass action on March 2nd. So far in 2019, a wide variety of activities have already taken place…

Ae Fond Rebellion.

You may have seen XR Scotland’s Rabbie Burns inspired action, in the news recently too, as XR members occupied the Scottish Parliament and conducted the UK’s first ever Citizens Assembly on Burns Day, the 25th of January, with crucial contributions from XR Glasgow members.

I don’t actually know any Burns poems to quote to you and find the language archaic but I’m quite a fan of social commentator and poet, Gil Scott-Heron. He famously said “the revolution will not be televised” but I’m beginning to wonder if he was right about that, as News outlets seemed quite keen to broadcast our recent action at the Scottish Parliament.

Fun Fact: Gil Scott-Heron’s dad played football for Celtic FC in Scotland and was the first person of colour to do so.

You may take our lives, but you’ll never take our treedom!

When faced with the destruction of trees and natural habitat, to make way for building developments on Otago Lane close to her home, XR Glasgow member Cheyenne was quick to react and form alliances with a local ‘Save Our Lane’ group.

“The main criticism involves the destruction of a vital green area that is home to native wildlife such as otters, kingfishers and bats. The area is part of Glasgow’s Green Corridor and hence should be considered a protected nature conservation area. The initial application stated that trees of a certain maturity and height will not be cut down. However, this was not adhered to”, Cheyenne told me.

Glasgow is known affectionately as ‘Dear Green Place’ and wider Scotland fondly referred to as ‘Caledonia’ – the name given to this area by the Romans, due to the vast expanse of woodlands in our region. Sadly we’ve seen our forestry systematically destroyed to a tiny fraction of the size it once was.

As the old song by Dougie MacLean goes: ‘Caledonia, you’re everything I’ve ever had’, yet still we destroy her namesake. Come to think of it, ‘Dear Concrete Jungle’ doesn’t have much of a ring to it either.

Rebel & Rejuvenate.

Of course, a hard day of action requires time to reflect and rejuvenate and with XR Glasgow’s new ‘Book/Craft’ gatherings, people are able to come together, talk, listen and conduct vitally important talking and making therapy with one another.

“We need to form bonds and care for each other as well as planning actions and creating resources”, group creator, Anna, reflects. “It might also be a focus for people who don’t feel any of the Working Groups are calling to them just now, or are trying to work out how they want to get involved”, she goes on to say, so this event provides a welcoming and inclusive outlet for further discussion.

Youth Strike 4 Climate.

It’s true also, that some of the younger members, along with their families, have found our way of working hard to fit in with the demands of daily life. XR Member Sapna has developed an inspiring initiative to combat this however, with ‘Wee Rebellion’, an event attended by 250 parents and young people.

“It’s really difficult for parents, teenagers and children to get to meetings in the evenings but because of the way most people’s work schedules function, it’s the obvious time to have meetings to talk about issues and plan actions. Wee Rebellion will attempt to be a space for parents, children and young people to talk to each other about how they can engage with XR and to generally raise awareness about climate change with the hope of finding shared vision for change. At our first event, among other activities, there will be a discussion space for adults asking what are the barriers to participation for caregivers and what strategies can we collectively come up with to overcome them”, Sapna tells me.

Less nuisance, more news sense.

Although there are challenges to overcome, fortunately it’s now fairly easy for me to keep abreast of environment news, thanks to the new ‘Glasgow St’ online briefing paper. The brainchild of XR member Thomas, ‘Glasgow St’ has clear principles, which set it apart.

Being over-reliant on traditional media for your climate news may not be the wisest decision. With climate lobbyists and business interests attempting to influence the agenda, we must analyse and scrutinise it ourselves. G-Street’s wiki approach allows for a collective learning experience, which I’m sure will prove valuable to the whole XR movement. Users of Medium – take a look and contribute.

To keep in touch with XR Glasgow, like us on Facebook, follow @ScotlandXr on Twitter, and @xrscotland on Instagram. Sign up for our mailing list by emailing xrglasgow@gmail.com. From February we will meet weekly on Tuesdays at 7pm at the Kinning Park Complex.

 

 

 

Articles Diaries Ecological Breakdown and Response Regenerative Culture

Extinction Rebellion isn’t about the Climate

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Originally posted by Stuart Basden on Stu’s Blog

 

Yes, yes, I know. The climate is breaking down. It’s urgent. An emergency. We’ve only got a few years left to ‘fix’ it.

Indeed, we won’t fix it. Weather patterns will become increasingly unstable and unpredictable, and the effects it will soon have on how humans around the world grow food will be devastating, likely causing harvests to fail across entire continents and food prices to sky-rocket. Millions have already suffered due to the amplified instability. We’re facing imminent societal collapse (whatever that means), both around the world and in the UK. All of our lives are soon going to radically change.

None of this is particularly controversial. When a bus is driving with a certain momentum towards a person, it gets clearer and clearer that it will hit the person. After a certain point, it’s inevitable. And that’s where we stand now, with regards to the momentum of climatic change. The bus is about to hit us. Our lives are about to change. It’s not clear whether or not we’ll survive (as a species). Many species have already been run over. Two hundred species each and every day go extinct.

I’ve been with Extinction Rebellion (XR) from the start. I was one of the 15 people in April 2018 who came together and made the collective decision to try to create the conditions that would initiate a rebellion. I was a coordinator of one of the original five working groups, and I’ve been organising with XR day-and-night since then (frugally living off my savings so I don’t have to work, having quit an industry that paid me £1000/week). And I’ve been in RisingUp (the organisation from which XR has emerged) since the first RisingUp action in November 2016. I’m a RisingUp Holding Group member, and a member of the XR Guardianship Team.

And for the sake of transparency: that previous paragraph is all about me ‘pulling rank’ — I’m trying to convince you to listen to what I have to say…

And I’m here to say that XR isn’t about the climate. You see, the climate’s breakdown is a symptom of a toxic system of that has infected the ways we relate to each other as humans and to all life. This was exacerbated when European ‘civilisation’ was spread around the globe through cruelty and violence (especially) over the last 600 years of colonialism, although the roots of the infections go much further back.

As Europeans spread their toxicity around the world, they brought torture, genocide, carnage and suffering to the ends of the earth. Their cultural myths justified the horrors, such as the idea that indigenous people were animals (not humans), and therefore God had given us dominion over them. This was used to justify a multi-continent-wide genocide of tens of millions of people. The coming of the scientific era saw this intensify, as the world around us was increasingly seen as ‘dead’ matter — just sitting there waiting for us to exploit it and use it up. We’re now using it up faster than ever.

Euro-Americans violently imposed and taught dangerous delusions that they used to justify the exploitation and reinforced our dominance, while silencing worldviews that differed or challenged them. The UK’s hand in this was enormous, as can be seen by the size of the former British empire, and the dominance of the English language around the world. There is stark evidence that everyday racial bias continues in Britain, now, today. It’s worth naming some of these constructed delusions that have been coded into societies and institutions around the world:

  • The delusion of white-supremacy centres whiteness and the experience of white people, constructing and perpetuating the myth that white people and their lives are somehow inherently better and more valuable than people of colour.
  • The delusion of patriarchy centres the male experience, and excludes/hinders female assigned people from public life (reducing them to a possession or object for ownership or consumption). Patriarchy teaches dominating and competitive behaviours, and emphasises the idea that the world is a place of scarcity, separation and powerlessness.
  • The delusions of Eurocentrism include the notion that Europeans know what is best for the world.
  • The delusions of hetero-sexism/heteronormativity propagate the idea that heterosexuality is ‘normal’ and that other expressions of sexuality are deviant.
  • The delusions of class hierarchy uphold the theory that the rich elite are better/smarter/nobler than the rest of us, and make therefore better decisions.

There are other delusions. These delusions have become ingrained in all of us, taught to us from a very young age.

None of these delusions have ended, although some of the arguments that supported them (e.g. phrenology) have been dispelled. They continue to play out through each of us, in our ways of relating, regardless of our identity. The current pride in the history of the British empire, or the idea that the USA is on the side of ‘good’, continues to enable neo-colonialism in 2019, taking the form of palm-oil plantations, resources wars, and the parasitical financial sector, to name but a few. The task of Extinction Rebellion is to dispel these delusions. We need to cure the causes of the infection, not just alleviate the symptoms. To focus on the climate’s breakdown (the symptom) without focusing attention on these toxic delusions (the causes) is a form a denialism. Worse, it’s a racist and sexist form of denialism, that takes away from the necessary focus of the need for all of us to de-colonise our selves.

My ancestors are European, some of whom claimed to ‘own’ people as slaves. There are black people with the name Basden in the Americas, and I have begun to mobilise my (white) family to make contact in order to seek to pay reparations.

However, my own accountability cannot be fully paid through this. The insanity* of the mind of the coloniser continues today. It continues in the extraction of fossil fuels, minerals and water from the earth. It continues in deforestation and industrial agriculture. It continues in a callous culture of consumption, which intensifies each Christmas. It continues in evictions and deportations. It continues in the ways of relating to those around us that perpetuate separation and division.

The result is isolation, pain and suffering. The result can be felt at the individual level — in the endemic levels of loneliness and mental-health illness. It can be felt at the community level — in the theft of land for plunder and profit by largely-European-and-US-based banks and corporations. And it can be felt at the global level — in the polluting of our air and oceans.

So Extinction Rebellion isn’t about the climate. It’s not even about ‘climate justice’**, although that is also important. If we only talk about the climate, we’re missing the deeper problems plaguing our culture. And if we don’t excise the cause of the infection, we can never hope to heal from it.

This article is calling to all of those who are involved in XR who sometimes slip into saying it’s a climate movement. It’s a call to the American rebels who made a banner saying “CLIMATE extinction rebellion”. It’s a call to the XR Media & Messaging teams to never get sloppy with the messaging and ‘reduce’ it to climate issues. It’s a call to the XR community to never say we’re a climate movement. Because we’re not. We’re a Rebellion. And we’re rebelling to highlight and heal from the insanity that is leading to our extinction. Now tell the truth and act like it.

* I use the term ‘insanity’ carefully, with the intention of highlighting the need for healing. Indigenous First Nation people helpfully taught me to see the mindset of the coloniser as a sickness. In no way do I intend to marginalise or discredit the experience of people who have been labelled ‘insane’ by a normative system, nor who identify as being ‘insane’.
** Climate Justice refers to the injustice that those who are affected first and worst by extreme weather events (the people in the poorer countries, the majority of whom live in the Global South) are not likely to be the ones who caused the climate emissions (the people who consume the most, including the pathologically wasteful cultures of Europe and Turtle Island (aka North America), and the rich who live/travel around the world).
Articles Ecological Breakdown and Response

Focus SIDS – Island nations threatened by climate breakdown

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Farewell post from Kate Goldstone -thanks for all your help, Kate!

Sources:

You think you’ve got it bad living on the mainland, or inland, or in a country within a continent. But plenty of small island nations, known as SIDS or Small Island Developing States, are a whole lot more vulnerable to our fast-warming climate than most.

There are several reasons for this unusual level of vulnerability. According to Wikipedia (1), SIDS ‘tend to share similar sustainable development challenges, including small but growing populations, limited resources, remoteness, susceptibility to natural disasters, vulnerability to external shocks, excessive dependence on international trade, and fragile environments.’ And all that means a growing number of them are set to disappear completely as sea levels inexorably rise.

How would you feel if your homeland was about to disappear?

Imagine you’ve been born and bred in a small island state, nurtured by it all your life. Because you know the place so intimately it is deeply familiar. Because you eat local foods and drink local water the land is quite literally in your bones, in your teeth, and you feel a soul-deep love for your homeland. But your island is sinking beneath the waves, you’re powerless to change the inevitable, and you and your family are in a state of horrified, shocked mourning. There goes your culture, your history, your ancestors, everything familiar.

Can you imagine how dreadful that feels? Can you picture how frustrating it must be when nobody can really help? There’s nothing that any of you, the residents of your magical archipelago, can do to stop the waters rising. Would you blame the wealthy, greedy people, the people far away who warmed the earth in the first place? Probably.

Global warming and rising sea levels are threatening many SIDS, by their very nature first in the firing line, barely above sea level with little or no high ground. Most have fragile economies sustained by tourism and international trade. Many have under-developed infrastructures. And the people quite literally have nowhere else to go as the waters flow steadily higher. Here are just a few of the world’s many SIDS that are currently at risk of vanishing for good. (2)

The Republic of Maldives – Due to disappear under the waves

The Republic of Maldives covers an area of just under 300 square kilometres and lies to the south of India. Once colonised by the Portuguese, Dutch and British, now it’s an independent republic. Sea level rises are placing the nation, its people and economy at terrible risk, the islands being some of the lowest-lying on earth. At a maximum height above sea level of 2.3 metres, many of the 1200 tiny islands and atolls that make up this magical place are already going under.

The Solomon Islands – Under serous threat from the seas

Independent from Britain since 1978, the people of the Solomon Islands, in the Indian Ocean, have been warning us for several years that sea level rises will destroy their world, but the world hasn’t listened. Climate change is set to destroy this tiny yet precious place over the next couple of decades, sinking a total of just under 1000 islands across two unique archipelagos.

The Republic of Kiribati – First to see the sunrise… but not for much longer

The remote Republic of Kiribati covers an epic three million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean to the north east of Australia, the place where the New Year is celebrated first of all, before it reaches the rest of the world. Independent from Britain since 1979 it’s at special risk of sea level rise, being just 3m above sea level. The waters are currently rising by more than a centimetre a year, not a lot by some standards but four times faster than the global average. This means lovely Kiribati will probably completely disappear before too long, losing 33 precious coral atolls and one island forever.

Vanuatu and Tuvalu

The UN pinpoints the Republic of Vanuatu as the world’s most vulnerable island nation to every type of natural disaster. The nation covers just over 12,000 square kilometres and has been a new, independent state since 1980, now completely separate from Britain and France. Sea level rise here is already a problem, but the place is also especially vulnerable to increasing numbers of cyclones of increasing strengths. Take cyclone Pam, which trashed all but 10% of the buildings in the capital. 83 stunning volcanic islands make up the nation, and they are all at risk from sea level rise.

Tuvalu is another island nation already suffering more than average from the ravages of global warming. Tuvalu is the world’s least polluting country, but at the same time has an incredibly low average height above sea level. Independent from Britain since 1978 and close to Vanuatu, it was also severely damaged by cyclone Pam and is set to disappear thanks to global warming. That means four Pacific coral reefs, five atolls and three islands are set to vanish from the face of the Earth before long.

Is there any good news for SIDS?

We’re at crisis point, and no wonder so many SIDS are so keen to move towards low-carbon, climate resilient economies, as set out in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) implementation plan for climate change-resilient development.

On the other hand unless the rest of the world dramatically and quickly reduces its reliance on fossil fuels and slows climate change island nations, no matter how renewable their energy, will remain powerless to prevent the waves rising. In the same way that no man – or woman – is an island, island nations depend on the rest of the world for their survival and we can’t separate our fates.

While places like the Caribbean can go ahead and create renewable energy until they’re blue in the face, because the rest of the world is fiddling while Rome burns, they’re stuffed. And that’s everyone’s responsibility.

As always, the solution rides on the political will of the leaders of wealthier, more influential, larger countries and the larger economic groups they fall into, ‘organisations’ like Europe and OPEC.

Join the rebellion!

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Kate Goldstone BA Hons
Freelance Copywriter

www.helpinthecity.com
katien@helpinthecity.com
07976 737243
Twitter: @KatieGoldstone1