Twice
a week a plane lands at the airstrip on Tuvalu’s main
atoll, Funafuti. Reporters and film crews from Japan, the United
States and Korea step into the equatorial heat to document the
last human habitation on the tiny Pacific nation before it “sinks”,
swallowed up by rising sea levels, one of the first casualties
of climate change.
Tuvalu’s 10,000-odd population see things rather differently.
Tataua Pese, himself a former journalist, says everyone knows
life is changing on the world’s fourth smallest country,
which is made up of nine bumps that peek a bare five metres
above sea level, a total of just 26 square kilometres of crushed
coral and poor top soil.
“There was the base of a gun, concrete blocks made by
the Americans during World War Two. It was on land during those
times when I was a boy and surrounded by trees,” he recalls.
“Now if you go there, it’s not on land any more,
it’s in the sea, in water. So that shows how badly climate
change has affected us.”
Tuvalu’s first prime minister following independence from
Britain in 1978, Sir Toaripi Lauti, says people can quantify
how much land has crumbled into the sea.
“Erosion from the beaches got worse, and that’s
one of the things you can see all along,” he says, pointing
to the coastline.
“I went on one of these trips showing boundaries of land
and they measure the land and we found it very short. The old
people pointed and sure enough we saw, there were yards missing,
if we measure it. The worst we saw was about 100 feet (30 metres)…
gone, that was it.”
There are other changes too: salt water seeping under the shallow
land into taro pits to reduce crops; more frequent and more
severe storms; dying coral.
But for many Tuvaluans like Tataua Pese, who is now the climate
change and disaster management officer with the Tuvalu Red Cross
Society, a National Red Cross Society in formation, the answer
is not to abandon a sinking country.
“You have to live in your home country; you don’t
want to leave to stay in another country. Moving to another
place is a last resort. So while we are here and Red Cross is
here, we can always help.”
The Red Cross help takes many forms, some of them surprising.
One sweltering day, Tataua loads up a motor boat and takes his
team to Funafala Islet, 45 minutes’ journey away. It might
seem close by, but the eight families living on the atoll have
no phone and no way to communicate with the outside world. If
there’s a cyclone or storm surge – or medical emergency
– they are stuck.
Once on Funafala, the Tuvalu Red Cross delivers a solar-powered
satellite phone, part of a network of phones placed around remote
Pacific locations by the New Zealand Red Cross, and trains residents
in its use.
Together, the Red Cross visitors and the community members,
who are mostly older people, draw a map of hazards in their
environment – such as the directions storms normally arrive
from. They discuss what resources the community has to cope
with such disasters. Tuvalu Red Cross health and care field
officer Matakina Simii trains them in basic first aid.
In related Red Cross programmes, every fortnight, pairs of volunteers
on Funafuti Atoll visit older people or people with a disability
at home; as well as checking on their wellbeing, the Red Cross
has identified them as needing help to evacuate in a disaster.
Volunteers also plant hardy pandanus trees on the coastline,
pick up rubbish and educate children about the environment.
Next to the Tuvalu Red Cross headquarters is a shipping container
stocked with blankets, sheets and 20-litre water containers.
The preparation is not academic; October is the start of cyclone
season. Funafala Islet resident Mitala Folau says the storms
are terrifying.
“We prepare whatever food we have and pack it into buckets
and boil enough water. If there are strong winds or big waves,
we go to the widest part of the islet and take shelter there.
“Those are our only hope, unless someone brings a bigger
boat and takes us away, as we cannot do anything here.”
Just weeks after the last emergency training session, Tuvalu’s
main island, Funafuti Atoll, was hit by a terrible storm surge.
Tufitu Lotee was woken by the roar of the wind that April night.
Whipped up by the wind and lifted by low pressure, ocean waves
lashed the shore, surging up to the house where she lay with
her family at one overcrowded tip of Funafuti.
She managed to raise the alarm. Freshly trained Red Cross volunteers
helped evacuate families and gave them relief items from the
container. Some families stayed at Red Cross headquarters until
their homes were repaired.
How does Tufitu feel safe living just metres from the sea?
“When I think about it, it’s not safe for other
people. But we just stay because this is where we stay. We have
no other place to go.”
Tataua Pese says disaster risk reduction measures – combined
with traditional and scientific knowledge – are the key
to feeling safe on Tuvalu.
“There are many ways we can assist the Tuvaluan people,
not to pack and leave, but to stay and look into the future.
And [see] whatever is around us, which we could use to adapt
ourselves to the changes in climate and the disasters to come.”
It’s a guardianship role that extends into the future,
says Tataua.
“If we want to assist the next generation to see the beauty
of the islands that we are seeing now, we had better keep working;
not give up and walk away to live in other countries.”
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The
narrowest part of Tuvalu's mainland, Funafuti Atoll, is
barely a few metres wide. (p16589)
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Rising
sea levels are not the most pressing threat to people
on Tuvalu. (p16588)
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Tuvalu
Red Cross Society health and care officer Matakina Simii
travels to far flung islands to teach first aid. (p16586)
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The Tuvalu Red Cross Society team arrives at Funafala
Islet, ready to train residents in disaster risk reducation.
(p16587)
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Tataua
Pese trains people on Funafala Islet in using a satellite
phone, often the only means of communicating with the
outside world in a disaster. (p16583)
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