How These Tiny Island Nations Are Leading The Charge Against Climate Change
by Pauli Poisuo
So you live on an island. This is awesome news, because as ten out of ten people who enjoy being surrounded by water from all sides will happily tell you, islands are awesome.
This isn’t just any ol’ trash-covered, big city isle, either. We’re talking about a full-on tropical island, with palm trees, white sands ... the works. In other words, precisely the kind of thing a not insignificant part of the population likes to imagine as their optimal retirement scenario. Yet, they’re not here. You are. Winner, winner, paradise island equivalent of a delicious chicken dinner! Which, come to think of it, is probably just a chicken dinner. Even if your island can’t support poultry, international trade does exist, even in the context of this analogy.
There’s just one little problem, and as it turns out, "little" is an excellent descriptor here. See, over time, you can’t help but notice that there seems to be a lot less island than there used to be. It’s almost as if the whole place is getting smaller ... or the water is rising higher.
Oh, crap. It’s the latter, of course. Climate change, and all that. Can anything save your precious home before it sinks completely?
We've talked about the weird effects of climate change before, but sometimes they're more direct, like the predicament many island nations of the Pacific find themselves in. Due to rising water levels, places like Fiji are being covered in liquid like there’s no tomorrow, and some of the smaller islands have been all but abandoned because of this. So, what’s a poor island denizen to do? Start mainlining episodes of Yellowstone in anticipation of the inevitable move to Montana, or some other landlocked area? Say “screw it” and go full Waterworld?
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Not ideal.
Haha, of course not. I'm not writing this to share depressing climate-induced migration statistics. The residents of nations like the Maldives, the Marshall Islands, and the aforementioned Fiji aren’t planning to leave, you see; at least, not if they can help it. Instead, they went full-on rogue a few years ago and have been spending a considerable amount of their time getting the world to change, instead. Since the fate of their homes literally depends on it.
The island states have teamed up and used the power of politics to get the rest of the planet into this big-bucks battle against climate change, using their own predicament as a concrete example of the kinds of crises rising sea levels create. But instead of trying to browbeat the richer nations, Fiji developed something called the Talanoa Dialogue to better facilitate communcation. Based on the idea of storytelling, this strategy aims not to guilt other countries into action, but to have real dialogue and share real stories and examples of climate change's effects. In fact, participants are asked to ditch the PowerPoint stuff and simply have actual, human-to-human discussions.
With this tactic and their own perseverance at the negotiation table, they were the driving force behind a little thing called the 2015 Paris Agreement, the UN-governed international treaty that remains the gold standard in combating climate change. Keep in mind, these are countries with tiny populations — the Marshall Islands only have about 60,000 residents, and Fiji's population isn't even that of the U.S.'s tenth-largest city. Yet these smaller nations have been leading the charge, armed with empathy, understanding, and scary-as-hell, real-life examples of what is actually happening right now.
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Which is terrible.
So, is the islanders’ hard work successful? Well, yes and no. While they’ve no doubt been making progress, they’re also fully aware that the situation may require them to relocate eventually, lest they spend the rest of their existence waist deep in the ocean. They’re still as committed to the Paris Agreement’s emission cutting protocols and other demands as anyone else, if not more so — but they also know that the situation’s not exactly in their own hands anymore.
If anything, this only makes their actions more badass. After all, they’re not really doing what they do for themselves, alone — not at the end of the day. If you live within a reasonable distance of a body of salt water, there’s a fair chance that they’re doing it for you, too. If you had to spend the rest of your life respecting just one hustle, you could do a whole lot worse than this one.
