Uplifting skills of Kiribati islanders for migration

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Uplifting skills of Kiribati islanders for migration

By Kamalesh Sharma, Commonwealth Secretary-General

When governments talk about skills upgrading for their workforce, it is usually targeted at capacity-building for national development. But when the leader of a country says he is promoting skills upgrading of his people to prepare them for migration, it is a tragic prospect indeed. Why would a leader encourage brain drain at a time when attracting and retaining skills and talent is so crucial everywhere in promoting innovation, and supporting socio-economic and political progress for sustainable development? It is a practical way to save a nation.

For President Anote Tong of Kiribati, exporting skilled workers offers them the opportunity to build a new life elsewhere. Climate change is about to claim its victim – Kiribati. The Pacific island state, which is an archipelago comprising 33 islands which are coral atolls, is in clear and present danger of being taken over by the ocean. With the rise in sea level each year, Kiribati, whose coral atolls largely stand at less than two metres above sea level, will soon be swamped by sea water. Parts of the island chain are already facing this encroachment which has destroyed the land with salinated water.

During my recent visit to the capital, Tarawa, I saw for myself the devastation caused by the rising tide in one of the coastal settlements. A house by the sea was battered by the waves and its structure has collapsed through soil erosion. The only well in the village was contaminated by salt water. At the time of my visit in early November, the villagers were bracing themselves for a major tide expected to reach three metres high on land. There is no place to run from the high tide, particularly since almost all atolls are narrow strips of land surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. With population growth, immigration and shrinking land mass due to rising sea levels, residents have to move further inland, causing further over-crowding.

Hence the need to relocate the people of Kiribati to “any country which will have them”, said President Tong. Having to move his people away from their homeland for generations is a daunting and painful task. But the Kiribati leader is running out of options. For the survival of the people of Kiribati, the only way for them may be to leave the land of their ancestors forever. For the people of Kiribati, whose archipelago spans more than five million square kilometres – two-third the area of Australia – they have to prepare for the day when they have to move to distant shores as climate change refugees. The hope of President Tong is for larger and wealthier countries in the Pacific to offer refuge to his people. The demise of Kiribati within 50 years is what President Tong fears, but ensuring the survival of his nation is what he endeavours to do by appealing to the international community for help.

Kiribati, which has close to negligible carbon footprint, is a victim of global warming caused by other states. The ethical imperative is clear. While industrialised countries reap the profits of globalisation, Kiribati’s dividends are the loss of viability when it is bankrupt of its people – the human resource vital for its continuance. And then it becomes bankrupt of land itself with the loss of a country, when Kiribati turns into a latter day Atlantis. Fiction or fact?

I saw with my own eyes the precipice on which the people of Kiribati stand. I saw how close the ocean was to closing in in some parts: the sea water was on either side of a causeway spanning the atoll. What would become of the causeway when a two-metre wave sweeps across Kiribati? You would not want to be travelling on the causeway or anywhere near when that happens.

The carefree island dwelling has been replaced by existential concern. Kiribati’s days are being counted with each rising sun on the blue horizon. The hue of colours that greeted my dawn in Kiribati and beckoned my dusk in Tarawa is committed to memory as it is a tale I will tell my grandchildren and their children about my visit to an island in the Pacific in November 2012. Hopefully, I will not have to start with, ‘Once upon a time…’ but to explain that governments of the world had made a momentous decision then to strengthen co-operation and co-ordination to minimise the causes of climate change and mitigate its effects for small island states through financing, the sharing of technology, and building the capacity for these developing countries to cope with loss and damage to their land and ecosystems. I would want to tell them how this concerted global effort had helped to reduce the displacement of citizens and their migration to foreign shores.

I would also want to encourage them to visit the places I had visited before in Kiribati, particularly to the village by the sea in Tarawa to meet the children and grandchildren of the village headman I had met who said he would never leave the land of his forefathers even if the rising tide would come lapping at his doorstep.

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Coastal village in Tarawa, Kiribati, that was inundated by sea water following a recent high tide

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Kiribati Islanders wading in the sea off Tarawa

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Narrow strip of land in Tarawa, Kiribati, flanked by the Pacific Ocean

ENDS

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