76
AGENDA
December 4-5, 2010
As the climate change debate heats up in Cancun, the future of low-lying Pacific islands appears to be a matter of faith. Michael Green and Rodney Dekker report
No pot of gold F aaui Siale is sitting in her open-walled home at the northern end of Tuvalu’s atoll capital, Funafuti. Three generations live here, side by side on a sliver of coral sand barely 50m wide. Ocean waves thump the land to her left and a lagoon laps the shore on her right. It is Sunday morning and Faaui sings along to hymns on the radio as a heavy wind blows and coconut palms rattle and splay towards the ground. To an outsider, everything about this scene seems precarious. But not to Faaui — and for that, she claims divine assurance. Tuvalu is the world’s second least populous nation after Vatican City. Its 12,000 residents live on several reefs and atolls located halfway between Australia
and Hawaii. Nearly all the land is less than 3m above sea level. The director of the tiny nation’s environment department, Matio Tekinene, says his people are already suffering the ill effects of climate change. Rising sea levels and more frequent king tides are causing coastal erosion and salinating the groundwater, making it hard to grow the traditional subsistence root crop pulaka. The fresh water supply is now restricted to rainfall, which arrives in unfamiliar patterns at unfamiliar times. Coral bleaching is reducing fish stocks close to shore. “Food security related to climate change is a very important issue for us,” he says. “Tuvaluan people, we live very much on our limited crops and marine resources. Nowadays there is a great change because we have
difficulty to grow these natural foods.” But 60-year-old Faaui is unconcerned. She does not accept that the sea level is rising. “I believe there won’t be any more floods because of the covenant between Noah and the Lord God,” she says, with her daughter-in-law interpreting. “They made a promise during those days that there won’t be another flood in the world.” It’s a belief shared by many of her compatriots. Recently, a survey conducted by the Tuvalu Christian Church found that nearly one-third of the population does not believe in climate change, based on their interpretation of the Old Testament. In Genesis, Chapter 9, after the great flood subsides, God tells Noah there will never again be a flood to destroy Earth and chooses
the rainbow as the symbol of that promise. Earlier in the morning, Faaui and her family gathered next door to worship with their neighbour, Reverend Tafue Lusama, a minister in the Tuvalu Christian Church. The church is the country’s dominant religious organisation with a membership comprising nine out of ten Tuvaluans. Reverend Lusama prefers an alternative interpretation of God’s pledge to Noah. “God is faithful to his covenant and He is not causing climate change and sea level rise,” he says. “It is human-induced, not divinely induced.” The minister has built a low, concrete sea wall to protect his home. .................................................................................
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High tide: Tupulanga Tauia wades to the shore of Tuvalu’s main island, Funafuti. Pictures: Rodney Dekker
TUVALU
0
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
1000km
HAWAII
EQ U AT O R SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN
VANUATU AUSTRALIA
FIJI
TAHITI
NEW ZEALAND