I propose to to all of us to consider from now on to form one sociocultural group called United Tribes of Melanesia or Union of Melanesian Tribes and Islands as a Pan Melanesian-ism for Survival and Common Destiny, that in long term will become the United States of Melanesia.
The Background
We cannot depend on MSG as it is fully controlled by colonial masters to continue serve their interests and needs.
We cannot stay inside colonial mapping and naming and think that our work with colonial borders will bring changes for good to our peoples in long term. We are lying to our own instinct, we are acting against the voice of the spirit inside us.
Climate change threatens our survival, we need to immediately respond to this existential threat to our small islands and tribes by mobilising unification and collective consolidation to save our future.
Many parts of the world, different societies and humans are busy talking about and taking steps to get out from this existential threat. Melanesian and South Pacific region has become one of the major areas where threated by global warming and climate change. We, the people, Melanesians, are not doing anything as a people. We are putting too much hope on our Prime Ministers and Presidents to work for our survival. We are totally wrong. They are serving their own political and financial and family interests. They are serving the masters, the colonial powers, particularly the United States, Australia, France, and England. They are not that concerned about many islands and tribes in Melanesia will disappear in 100 years, if not 1000 years from now.
We need to wake up! We need to get up! We have to stand up! We must speak up! Step up our actions to protect our own being, to determine our own destiny after our small islands disappear into the deep Blue Continent.
The Roles, Functions and Objectives
The role of the organisation is to organize discussions and concepts with framework on problems Melanesians are facing within 100 – 1000 years from now and what we should do now in anticipation to those scenarios
The function of the organization is to mobilise and formulate shared views, perspectives, and understanding on our current existence and formulate our ambitions for future developments to maintain our Melanesian. Brotherhood to stay intact, united, sustained.
The objective of the body is to mobilise people’s power across Melanesian Archipelago to get united in determining our collective destiny as a people of the Blue Continent in response to Climate change and global warming!
The Nature
This movement should be a movement of the peoples, tribes, islands and clans and NOT NGOS because we NGOS are the ones that systematically disabling and destabilizing the Identity and power of our real Melanesia-hood and Melanesia-ness.
Closuring Remark
We have to stop colonial masters punish our collective destiny with death penalty based on colonial map and colonial interests, for the sake of serving our colonial masters. We have to stop this deadly nonsense. We have to come out clear and strong!
We as human beings, being created by God in His Own Image, should not wait and expect countries set up based on colonial map, namely West Papua, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, Bougainville, Kanaky to become our protector. We have to get out from them.
We, as human beings have to stand up as human communities of tribes and islands, starting determining our future from now on. Hoping nation-states to do anything at all is a suicidal act.
Holy spirit speaks so my task is to speak it out. I am channeling what is coming!
The Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Tuvalu this week has ended in open division over climate change. Australia ensured its official communique watered down commitments to respond to climate change, gaining a hollow victory.
Traditionally, communiques capture the consensus reached at the meeting. In this case, the division on display between Australia and the Pacific meant the only commitment is to commission yet another report into what action needs to be taken.
The cost of Australia’s victory is likely to be great, as it questions the sincerity of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s commitment to “step up” engagement in the Pacific.
Australia’s stance on climate change has become untenable in the Pacific. The inability to meet Pacific Island expectations will erode Australia’s influence and leadership credentialsin the region, and provide opportunities for other countries to grow influence in the region.
An unprecedented show of dissent
When Morrison arrived in Tuvalu, he was met with an uncompromising mood. In fact, the text of an official communique was only finished after 12 hours of pointed negotiations.
While the “need for urgent, immediate actions on the threats and challenges of climate change”, is acknowledged, the Pacific was looking for action, not words.
Morrison was met with an uncompromising mood in by leaders in Tuvalu. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
What’s more, the document reaffirmed that “strong political leadership to advance climate change action” was needed, but leadership from Australia was sorely missing. It led Tuvaluan Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga to note:
I think we can say we should’ve done more work for our people.
Presumably, he would have hoped Australia could be convinced to take more climate action.
In an unprecedented show of dissent, smaller Pacific Island countries produced the alternative Kainaki II Declaration. It captures the mood of the Pacific in relation to the existential threat posed by climate change, and the need to act decisively now to ensure their survival.
And it details the commitments needed to effectively address the threat of climate change. It’s clear nothing short of transformational change is needed to ensure their survival, and there is rising frustration in Australia’s repeated delays to take effective action.
Australia hasn’t endorsed the alternative declaration and Canberra has signalled once and for all that compromise on climate change is not possible. This is not what Pacific leaders hoped for and will come at a diplomatic cost to Australia.
Conflict had already begun brewing in the lead up to the Pacific Islands Forum. The Pacific Islands Development Forum – the brainchild of the Fijian government, which sought a forum to engage with Pacific Island Nations without the influence of Australia and New Zealand – released the the Nadi Bay Declaration in July this year.
This declaration called on coal producing countries like Australia to cease all production within a decade.
But it’s clear Canberra believes compromise of this sort on climate change would undermine Australia’s economic growth and this is the key stumbling block to Australia answering its Pacific critics with action.
As Sopoaga said to Morrison:
You are concerned about saving your economy in Australia […] I am concerned about saving my people in Tuvalu.
And a day before the meeting, Canberra announced half a billion dollars to tackle climate change in the region. But it received a lukewarm reception from the Pacific.
The message is clear: Canberra cannot buy off the Pacific. In part, this is because Pacific Island countries have new options, especially from China, which has offered Pacific island countries concessional loans.
As tension built at the Pacific Island Forum meeting, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters argued there was a double standard with respect to the treatment of China on climate change.
China is the world’s largest emitter of climate change gasses, but if there is a double standard it’s of Australia’s making.
Australia purports to be part of the Pacific family that can speak and act to protect the interests of Pacific Island countries in the face of China’s “insidious” attempts to gain influence through “debt trap” diplomacy. This is where unsustainable loans are offered with the aim of gaining political advantage.
But countering Chinese influence in the Pacific is Australia’s prime security interest, and is a secondary issue for the Pacific.
But unlike Australia, China has never claimed the moral high ground and provides an attractive alternative partner, so it will likely gain ground in the battle for influence in the Pacific.
Growing confidence among Pacific leaders has changed diplomatic dynamics forever. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
For the Pacific Island Forum itself, open dissent is a very un-Pacific outcome. Open dissent highlights the strains in the region’s premier intergovernmental organisation.
Australia and (to a lesser extent) New Zealand’s dominance has often been a source of criticism, but growing confidence among Pacific leaders has changed diplomatic dynamics forever.
This new pacific diplomacy has led Pacific leaders to more steadfastly identify their security interests. And for them, the need to respond to climate change is non-negotiable.
If winning the geopolitical contest with China in Pacific is Canberra’s priority, then far greater creativity will be needed as meeting the Pacific half way on climate change is a prerequisite for success.
Pacific leaders have declared a climate crisis in the region and are demanding an end to coal mining.
The declaration was signed by several regional leaders at the Pacific Islands Development Forum in Fiji on Tuesday.
The declaration expresses grave concerns about the impacts the climate crisis will have on the Pacific.
In it, the Pacific Islands Development Forum called on governments of countries with high carbon emissions to stop hindering climate change efforts.
It also demands all coal producers immediately stop any new coal mining and phase out all existing production over the next 10 years.
The declaration asked the development forum’s 14-member states to immediately end subsidies on fossil fuel production.
Echoing 2018’s Boe Declaration from the Pacific Islands Forum, Tuesday’s declaration affirmed “that climate change poses the single greatest threat to the human rights and security of present and future generations of Pacific Island peoples”.
The move was welcomed by environmental non-profit 350.org, with founder Bill McKibben calling it a “very powerful manifesto”.
“The election, in the Pacific, of the government of Australia that continues to want to expand coal mines is a slap in the face to everyone else in that region and in the world,” he said in a videoed statement.
Bainimarama calls for concrete commitments to cut emissions
Meanwhile, Fiji’s prime minister said Pacific leaders should accept nothing less than concrete commitments to cut emissions at next month’s Pacific Islands Forum Summit.
Frank Bainimarama will be attending his first summit since 2008.
Fiji was suspended in 2009 in the wake of the 2006 coup and the abrogation of the then-constitution.
Mr Bainimarama had said he would stay away until New Zealand and Australia were no longer full Forum members.
In a speech at the Pacific Islands Development Forum – which was set up by Fiji after its suspension – Mr Bainimarama said the region cannot accept any watered-down commitments.
At last year’s forum, Australia was exposed as having attempted to water down a resolution that declared climate change the region’s greatest security threat.
Mr Bainimarama said the region needs greater commitments from the region’s bigger neighbours, hinting at Australia and New Zealand.
“Fiji and the Marshall Islands have already announced our intention to revise our own nationally determined contributions, and I urge this … membership to do the same and demand the same from the more developed economies, including and especially our large neighbours in the Pacific.
“We should accept anything less than concrete commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions in line with the most ambitious aspirations of the Paris Agreement. We cannot allow climate commitments to be watered down at a meeting hosted in a nation whose very existence is threatened by the rising waters lapping at its shores.”
The intensifying pressure on the ocean is a challenge for Pacific Islanders, so it is vital that ‘climate issues’ are prioritised.
Under the topic ‘healthy oceans’ the biggest fear remains unseen as the ocean ecosystem and communities are being threatened.
“Certainly, the oceans are in trouble, for many years now they’ve been looking after us,” says Mr. Kininmonth, Head of Marine Studies at USP.
“They’ve absorb a lot of excess from climate change, they’ve absorb large amount of pollution and yet we’ve taken many fishes as we possibly can as if there’s no tomorrow.
“We continue to treat the ocean in a way which is lacking respect and the oceans are now showing signs of really being in a large quiet amount of trouble.”
Women face unprecedented crises given the role they play to gather food especially those within the coastal.
“When we talk about climate crises, issues such as what is happening with our ocean, the catastrophe of this nature exacerbates in social inequalities,” says Zakiyyah Ali, member of Project Survival Pacific.
Healthy oceans are vital to the prosperity of Pacific communities and the global ecosystem, yet are facing an unprecedented crisis with issues of over-fishing, marine pollution and coastal erosion exacerbated by climate change.
Maureen Penjueli, from Pacific Network on Globalization (PNG) highlighted activities of seabed mining in Papua New Guinea (PNG) as destruction to their lifeline.
The message on healthy ocean will likely be heard at the United Nations this year when Mr. Justin Hunter attends to present at the Blue Pledge climate week.
The topic ‘Healthy Oceans’ was the first of its kind co-hosted by the University of the South Pacific (USP), the World Bank and its sister organization the International Finance Corporation, Future Pasifika.
Papua New Guinea’s prime minister says Australia and New Zealand must join his country in protecting Pacific islands from climate change impacts.
Papua New Guinea prime minister James Marape and wife Rachael (front) visit Australian ship-building company Austal in Perth, 23 July 2019 Photo: PNG PM Media
Papua New Guinea’s prime minister says Australia and New Zealand must join his country in protecting Pacific islands from climate change impacts.
James Marape has returned home after his first official visit to Australia, a six day-visit in which he met a range of officials from the prime minister to state governments.
Mr Marape told the Guardian that Australia had a moral responsibility to the upkeep of the planet, particularly given the extreme effects climate change is having on smaller Pacific nations.
He said the voices of smaller island nations must be listened to.
According to Mr Marape, Australia, New Zealand and PNG must shoulder some responsibility for the displacement of communities from the smaller regional countries caused by climate change.
He said he believed the bigger regional countries should lead the Pacific as a “bloc” of nations reconfiguring their economies to handle resource productions in a more environmentally and socially sensitive way.
Tony Yao used to fish in his outrigger canoe in the coastal waters off Tahiti in French Polynesia. But the decline in fish populations has forced his family to move in order to find less exploited fishing grounds.
His is just one story from the South Pacific that hints at a paradise being lost. The coral and volcanic archipelagos scattered across this massive expanse of ocean face a number of threats, but climate change and overfishing are arguably the most serious. In the past decade, many small-scale fishers have done the same as Tony Yao or abandoned their traditional livelihoods altogether.
Figures from the World Bank show that nearly one-third of global fish populations are overexploited. This has been driven by the rising demand for seafood across the world, but especially in China. Dwindling catches in China’s coastal waters have seen the country’s distant-water fishing fleet travel to the farthest reaches of the Pacific. There they are targeting tuna, the region’s highest-prized species.
Source: Congressional Record Service
The Pacific tuna fishing grounds are the largest in the world, contributing more than 60% of the global tuna catch. According to the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), almost all tuna in the region are caught in one of two ways. Those to be sold in cans are mainly caught by purse seine fishing boats targeting skipjack tuna. While longline vessels catch bigeye and yellowfin destined for high-value sashimi markets.
It’s a lucrative industry where a single tuna can net US$3 million. The fees paid by foreign vessels have also become a significant source of revenue for national governments. According to a Food and Agriculture Organization study completed in 2014, South Pacific island countries received just over US$340 million in fishing licence fees that year. At the same time, tuna remains a vital source of food and employment for local people, and many are unhappy about the increasing presence of Chinese fishing vessels.
In French Polynesia, there’s been a wave of online protests and petitionsto ban Chinese tuna fishing this year. Many accuse the Chinese of fishing illegally. There is no evidence for this and the Chinese deny it. However, they are buying up the biggest share of fishing licences, which is leaving competing fishers with less.
The Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) oversees an international convention that aims to ensure rules are fair for all foreign nations operating in exclusive economic zones (EEZs) – up to 200 nautical miles off shore – of the Pacific nations as well as in the high seas (international waters) area between latitude 20N to 20S. The latest WCPFC figures show that 3,239,704 metric tonnes of tuna were caught across the Pacific in 2017. Of that, 78% (nearly 2,539,950 metric tonnes) came from the area managed by the commission.
But much of the fishing for tuna takes place in the high seas, which is largely unregulated. Despite WCPFC efforts, the management of shared stocks of highly migratory species, like tuna, often fails. The presence of extensive areas of international waters among the EEZs complicates the region’s fishery management efforts. It is here that China dominates, with more than 600 vessels out of a total of 1,300 foreign-operated ships. Their fleet is enabled by government subsidies on fuel and shipbuilding, which assist new enterprises and allow others to keep operating.
James Movick, director general of the FFA, claims that management of the high seas is the biggest single threat to the sustainability of the Pacific tuna fisheries. “When fishing in our 200-mile EEZs, they are subject to regulation and a robust fishery management regime. Outside, it is pretty much a free-for-all, and tuna do not recognise the boundaries of our EEZs,” he said.
A lack of data transparency and public reporting on fisheries compounds the problem. The Pacific Islands Tuna Industry Association in Fiji maintains a registry of all fishing vessels licensed to fish in the region. John Maefiti, an executive officer with the association, indicates that there are 627 Chinese fishing vessels registered, and the majority are longliners. But he adds: “There are some Chinese-owned vessels that fly Pacific islands flags.”
Cecile Matai, responsible for offshore, coastal and lagoon fishing licence applications in Papeete, the Tahitian capital of French Polynesia, claims: “No Chinese ship has a fishing licence, but there are Chinese ships in our ports for refuelling and obtaining supplies, or with mechanical problems which are being repaired.”
A compounded crisis
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), climate change is compounding food security issues in the Pacific islands, with harvests from fisheries expected to fall between 10-30% by 2050. Rising water temperatures, lower levels of oxygen and shifting ocean currents are already having a profound impact on the four main tuna species, as well as more generally on fish habitats, food webs, fish populations and the productivity of fisheries.
Climate change is also leading to more extreme weather in the South Pacific. The 2015-2016 tropical cyclone season was one of the most disastrous on record. Cyclone Winston, which smashed into Fiji in February 2016, was the strongest ever to make landfall in the southern hemisphere. As sea surface temperatures become warmer, hurricanes, typhoons and tropical cyclones become more powerful.
Rising sea levels are another major issue for the region’s islands. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts global sea levels could climb by as much as 83 centimetres by the end of this century if greenhouse gas emissions remain high. The levels are creeping up even faster in the Pacific, where at least eight low-lying islands have been submerged in recent years.
Marine scientists are now finding links between ocean acidification and a decline in tuna populations. A new study in the journal Scienceoutlines the impacts warming waters have on commercially important fish species. Changes in the ocean temperature are affecting fragile ecosystem food webs. “While tuna spend their time in open water, tuna species as well as tuna fisheries depend on healthy coastal ecosystems such as coral reefs” claims UN Environment coral expert, Jerker Tamelander.
Over the sweep of a rich history in the South Pacific, Tony Yao and his ancestors have maintained a deep connection to the marine environment. After all, the ocean has always been the provider of life itself. Having met extraordinary challenges during their evolution, island cultures are now experiencing ones they could not have imagined, including unprecedented sea levels, storm surges from tropical cyclones, ocean warming, acidification, disappearing coral reefs, and competition from registered and unregistered fishing vessels.
The office of Nei Tabera Ni Kai (NTK), a film unit based in the town of Taborio, in the small island nation of Kiribati, is a small concrete building situated two metres above sea level, 30 metres from the lagoon on one side and 45 metres from the ocean on the other. Stacked under the louvred glass windows of one of its small rooms are 200 internal hard drives taken from computers over a period of 20 years. The office has no air conditioning, and the air is salty; there are regular electricity blackouts; and higher than normal wave surges, or “king tides”, threaten the town – and the whole southern end of the atoll, South Tarawa, on which it is located – more frequently than they used to.
Once a Kiribati household name, NTK has not worked on major projects for a couple of years. One of the co-founders, John Anderson, cameraman and editor, passed away in 2016. His long-time partner, producer, manager and scriptwriter Linda Uan, has been dealing with the loss and reflecting on the best way to preserve their shared legacy.
The independent film unit documented more than two decades of culture, history, creative arts practice, development, and social, heritage and environmental issues across the islands. In the absence of a national film agency or television media, NTK managed to piece together various sources of funding to work with government and communities to produce educational documentaries, feature films and “edutainment”. Their output had a significant impact on the scattered Kiribati population – people from other islands travelled to South Tarawa by boat or canoe just to pick up the latest VHS, and later DVD, of their productions.
In March 2019, Uan attended the Maoriland Film Festival in Otaki, New Zealand. During a discussion panel, she spoke passionately about NTK’s work over the years. She ended with a humble request for assistance with archiving, taking one of those rectangular hard drives containing raw footage from her handbag and unwrapping it from a lavalava (sarong), then holding it up for the audience to see. The group of New Zealand and international filmmakers gasped at the condition of the drive, and the prospective loss of decades of visual chronicles, exposed to the elements in Kiribati.Loading
All but one of the 33 islands in Kiribati are less than two metres above sea level. Large parts of the country are expected to be under water by 2050. From 2003 to 2016 Kiribati was led by President Anote Tong, who successfully raised global awareness of the climate change threats faced by his country. At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn in 2017, Kiribati was described as one of the world’s most vulnerable countries.
Annual temperatures in South Tarawa have increased by roughly 0.18 degrees Celsius per decade since 1950, according to the conference’s briefing paper. This warming, coupled with increasingly ferocious tidal storms and coastal flooding, is destroying the island’s ecosystems.
Saltwater that floods the islands from storm surges devastates land and property, polluting reservoirs that capture and filter groundwater for consumption. Salt water also jeopardises resources such as coconuts, pandanus and breadfruit, which residents rely on for food and many other household needs.
In the Kiribati population, there has been a rise in waterborne diseases, among other climate-change-induced illnesses, including cholera and dengue fever. Warming oceans, combined with increased ocean acidification, disrupts sea life, which is the cornerstone of Kiribati identity and the country’s economy. Kiribati depends almost entirely on its fishing sector for food and revenue, but the catch potential is expected to decrease by 70 per cent by the 2050s.
Kiribati is one of 48 nations in the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a partnership of countries most under threat from global warming. These include Tuvalu, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa and the Marshall Islands.
Kiribati once chaired the forum, and under Tong was a vocal proponent for limiting the temperature rise from global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond this temperature, sea levels are expected to increase to a point that would make Kiribati uninhabitable. Despite global campaigns calling for “1.5 to stay alive”, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change seeks to limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. This is devastating for most Pacific island countries.
Anote Tong was vocal about the need for Kiribati to face climate-induced migration “with dignity”. However, the current government, led by Taneti Mamau, rejects this vision of mass migration, instead emphasising local development. The government aims to develop and increase the land area on South Tarawa by about 100 acres, and on Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island) by 767 acres. It also owns 22 square kilometres of land on Vanua Levu in Fiji, with potential for forestry, livestock farming and other activities to shore up its food and economic security as Kiribati farmland comes under threat.
Reality too much for many to fathom
The level of carbon now in the atmosphere is more than 415 parts per million. The last time the Earth experienced these levels was during the Pliocene Epoch, between 5.3 and 2.5 million years ago. Then, global temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher, and the sea levels 25 metres higher. Pollution from climate change today is on track to push the Earth towards similar conditions. To many Australian voters, this reality is too much to fathom, presumed to be a hoax, or utterly unknown.
A sea wall in the village of Tebunginako at low tide.CREDIT:JUSTIN MCMANUS
Prime Minister Scott Morrison might support climate adaptation and mitigation programs in the Pacific through his “Pacific step-up”, but he does not support similar domestic policies, such as increased research on climate change or the introduction of a carbon price, and Australia has no renewable energy targets beyond 2030. It is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal but faces falling demand as its biggest customers – Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan and India – all shift towards cleaner energy. Burning coal is in Australia a bit like the right to bear arms in the United States: a freedom that causes major planetary harm, but the issue is severely politicised and many are not willing to imagine a future without it.
This protection of the mining industry is not new. For more than a century Australia has had a relationship with the South Pacific region that furthered its economic interests. Australian mining companies have been present in the Pacific since the beginning of the 20th century, wreaking havoc on ancient cultures and sustainable environmental practices while extracting phosphate as quickly as possible from places such as Nauru and Kiribati.
The value of phosphate, the superphosphate fertiliser it produced, and the growth effects it had on Australian farming production and exports were massive. In 1983 a monograph produced by the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies described phosphate as “the magic dust of Australian agriculture”. In the case of Banaba, an island that forms part of Kiribati, the mining infrastructure was left to rust and decay. People there live among the asbestos-riddled rubble, in a place that looks more like a post-apocalyptic lunarscape than a Pacific paradise.
When Peter Dutton made his flippant aside in 2015 in response to a quip by Tony Abbott about how islanders are not good at keeping to time (Dutton said, “Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to have water lapping at your door”) Tony deBrum, the former foreign minister for the Marshall Islands, posted on Twitter, “Next time waves are battering my home & my grandkids are scared, I’ll ask Peter Dutton to come over, and we’ll see if he is still laughing.”
Former minister for the environment Melissa Price’s words to Tong were also offensive. When she was introduced to him in a Canberra restaurant, it was widely reported – and verified by others in the restaurant – that she said, “I know why you’re here. It is for the cash. For the Pacific it’s always about the cash. I have my chequebook here. How much do you want?”
That kind of attitude towards Pacific island leaders needs to change. Such leaders have been criticising the production and consumption of fossil fuels and their impacts on the environment for almost 30 years. The former Nauru ambassador to the United Nations, Marlene Moses, wrote in 2016, “For the people of small islands, understanding the importance of the ocean to human survival is as natural as breathing. If the ocean is healthy, we are healthy; if the future of the ocean is uncertain, so is ours.”
The Pacific islands may be smaller states demographically and geographically, but the sea in which they sit covers one-third of the planet’s surface area. Pacific leadership on climate change is necessary and inevitable.
Knowledge a source of resilience for 2000 years
Since 1997, Nei Tabera Ni Kai has produced more than 400 films in both English and the Kiribati language focused on Kiribati knowledge, lives, issues and communities. They have documented what residents call “te katei ni Kiribati” – the Kiribati way. Their work should be stored in a well-funded archive and maintained for posterity. The name of the unit comes from a female ancestral spirit belonging to Linda Uan’s clan, responsible for women’s health and success. Climate change threatens not only the lands of families and clans such as hers, but the spiritual and cultural spheres associated with these landscapes.
The knowledge inherent in these spheres has been the source of resilience for more than 2000 years in an oceanic environment with limited land, flora and fauna, allowing islanders not only to survive but to produce complex, creative societies.
Australia is now saturated with messages about the existential threat of climate change, but the impacts will cut across all dimensions of human existence – the social, the political, the cultural, the economic, the environmental, and everything else that shapes our identities and relationships.
Climate change is here today, not just in some distant future, and Pacific Islanders who cannot always crawl into air-conditioned, climate-controlled bubbles experience its effects on a daily basis. While the people of the Pacific are resilient and have survived centuries of upheaval, climate change is already at emergency levels in the region – representing some of the first and starkest signs of the greatest ecological threat to ever face humanity.
Katerina Teaiwa is an associate professor in the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University. This is an edited extract of her essay “No Distant Future: Climate Change as an Existential Threat” published in Australian Foreign Affairs 6on July 15.
And changed the alarmism from global cooling to global warming, and now climate change.
Al Gore former Vice President of the United States of America
Although his science is often seriously wrong, no one can deny that Al Gore has a flare for the dramatic. Speaking about climate change in an October 12 PBS interview, the former vice-president proclaimed, “We have a global emergency.” Referring to the most recent UN climate report, Gore claimed it showed that current global warming “could actually extend to an existential threat to human civilization on this planet as we know it.”
Al Gore’s overblown rhetoric makes no sense, of course. Yet his hyperbolic claims beg the question: How did this all start?
Back in the 1970s, media articles warning of imminent climate change problems began to appear regularly. TIME and Newsweek ran multiple cover stories asserting that oil companies and America’s capitalist life style were causing catastrophic damage to Earth’s climate. They claimed scientists were almost unanimous in their opinion that manmade climate change would reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.
The April 28, 1975 Newsweek proposed solutions that even included outlawing internal combustion engines.
This sounds very similar to today’s climate change debate – except, in the 70s, the fear was manmade global cooling, not warming.
TIME magazine’s January 31, 1977 cover featured a story, “How to Survive The Coming Ice Age.” It included “facts” such as scientists predicting that Earth’s so-called average temperature could drop by 20 degrees Fahrenheit due to manmade global cooling. Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned readers that “the drop in temperature between 1945 and 1968 had taken us one sixth of the way to the next Ice Age temperature.”
Global cooling gained considerable traction with the general public. But then, instead of cooling as long predicted by manmade climate change advocates, the planet started warming again. Something had to be done to rescue the climate change agenda from utter disaster. Enter Al Gore.
Al Gore Sr., a powerful Senator from Tennessee, saw to it that his son was elected to the House of Representatives, serving from 1977 to 1985, then going on to the Senate from 1985 to 1993. Gore Junior’s primary issue was his conviction that the Earth would perish if we did not eliminate fossil fuels.
Gore advanced to Vice President under President Bill Clinton, where he was able to enact policies and direct funding to ensure that the climate change agenda became a top priority of the United States Government. Gore’s mission was boosted when Clinton gave him authority over the newly created President’s Council on Sustainable Development.
It will come as no surprise then that, when the Council’s Charter was revised on April 25, 1997, the “Scope of Activities” included the following directionto the Council:
Advise the President on domestic implementation of policy options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Council should not debate the science of global warming [emphasis added], but should instead focus on the implementation of national and local greenhouse gas reduction policies and activities, and adaptations in the U.S. economy and society that maximize environmental and social benefits, minimize economic impacts, and are consistent with U.S. international agreements. The Council should, at a minimum, identify and encourage potentially replicable examples of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across diverse sectors and levels of society.
Considering that the Council was tasked with advising the President “on matters involving sustainable development,” and alternative points of view on the science of climate change were effectively excluded, it was a foregone conclusion that the Clinton administration would go in the direction Gore wanted. Indeed, in their cover letter to the President accompanying their 1999 report, Advancing Prosperity, Opportunity and a Healthy Environment for the 21st Century, the Council stated: “Our report presents consensus recommendations on how America can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and take other steps to protect the climate.”
A cornerstone of Gore’s strategy was to ensure that all high-ranking government officials who had any involvement with funding policies relating to climate change were in line with his vision. These agencies included the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, Department of Education, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
An example of his power was shown when physicist Dr. William Happer, then Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy, testified before Congress in 1993 that scientific data did not support the hypothesis of manmade global warming. Gore saw to it that Happer was immediately fired. Fifteen years later, Happer quipped, “I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism. I did not need the job that badly.”
Al Gore was also able to leverage his high visibility, his movie awards, his Nobel Prize, and his involvement in various carbon trading and other schemes into a personal fortune. When he ended his tenure as Vice President in 2001, his net worth was $2 million. By 2013, it exceeded $300 million.
Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, provided a series of graphic images showing the apocalyptic consequences that some had predicted if fossil fuels were allowed to continue warming the planet. Images included melting glaciers, dying polar bears, spreading diseases, coastal cities inundated by massive floods, cities wiped out by hurricanes and tornadoes, and food supplies exterminated by droughts.
This compelling propaganda played a major role in frightening an entire generation about the future, causing young people and many parents to feel guilty about the role that they and their country were supposedly having in destroying our beautiful planet.
Since then, Americans have been told constantly that they should feel irresponsible if they drive cars or use fossil fuel energy to heat their homes or power their businesses. A rapid, massive conversion away from coal, oil and natural gas to renewable energy sources such and wind and solar, we are told, is the only hope for saving the planet.
Now children are increasingly depressed about their future, thanks to the constant barrage of global warming propaganda that they receive at school. Indeed, they have become so brainwashed and cowed by their peers that they no longer dare to question any statement made about catastrophic climate change.
Yet, essentially everything in Gore’s climate change agenda is either wrong or highly misrepresented.
Now that he is President Donald Trump’s Senior Scientist for the National Security Council, Dr. Happer needs to show there is no “scientific consensus” on these issues, rekindle informed debate on climate and energy issues, and help bring hope, common sense and real science back into the discourse – to help end the dangerous mythology of dangerous manmade global warming.
Speaker Dr Jiko Luveni with other invited Speakers at the forum. Picture: SUPPLIED
FIJI, like many Pacific islands, faced the threat of several challenges that made it vulnerable to climate change and natural disasters.
This was highlighted by Fiji’s Speaker of Parliament Dr Jiko Luveni during the Second Eurasian Women’s Forum that was held in major convention centres and cultural venues in the historical centre of St. Petersburg, Russia, from September 19-21.
Dr Luveni was invited to attend the forum by the Federation Council Speaker, Valentina Matviyenko, which was organised by the Federation Council and the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Independent States (CIS), with support from several ministries, agencies and NGOs.
In her opening address, Dr Luveni said the effect of climate change disproportionately affected women and girls in Fiji.
She said women needed to have full political, economic and social participation that would ensure the notion of leaving no one behind towards Fiji’s pursuit for sustainable development.
She adds every nation should have a national plan to effectively address women’s issues.
Vanuatu was part of a recent regional conference on managing natural resources such as the ocean in a changing climate. By Anita Roberts
A conference has been held recently for experts in the mineral resource sector from the Pacific region to talk about how to prepare and mitigate the threats of climate change on natural resources.
The Coordinator of Pacific Risk Tools for Resilience (PARTneR) Project under the Ministry of Climate Change, Johnny Tarry Nimau, represented Vanuatu in the 3-day Pacific Islands Science, Technology and Resources Network Conference in Fiji.
Natural resources such as water, land, wind energy and the ocean are essential for humankind. Action is required to reduce the risk poses to these extractive sectors by climate change as a global issue.
Regional geoscientists and experts are working on strategies to mitigate the imminent threats of climate change from the geoscience perspective, PARTneR Coordinator Nimau said after the conference.
“The conference reflects on the linkages between geoscience, the ocean and natural resources,” Nimau conveyed in a statement.
“It provides an avenue for us to discuss sustainable management of our ocean and natural resources. It about how Pacific islands can mitigate for the damage imposed on their oceans and climate change impacts from the geoscience perspective.
“Sessions focussed on key areas such as ocean science, science of natural hazards and risks to Pacific communities including land use, energy and infrastructure development”.
‘Geo-Science Development in the Pacific Islands-Planning for 2030’ was the theme of the conference, which was supported by the Government of Fiji and the Geoscience Division of the Pacific Community (SPC).
PARTneR is managed by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and funded by the government of New Zealand, through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT).
