Tuvalu is drowning

The island nation is slowly being inundated as the ocean rises, and some citizens are fleeing. How will the world handle a flood of "climate refugees"?

Editor's note: Early Signs: Reports From a Warming Planet is a joint project of the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Salon and NPR's "Living on Earth." The series runs Fridays through May 5 in Salon, and you can find radio versions of each story on "Living on Earth's" Web site. Read about how the series came into being here.

By Alexandra Berzon

Read more: Refugees, Politics, News, New Zealand, Global Warming, Climate Change, Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet

March 31, 2006 | One day in the late 1980s, Penisita Taniela was sitting on a straw mat in his stilt-raised house over a narrow slit of coral in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He fixated on the news blaring via satellite from New Zealand: Scientists visiting the islands of Tuvalu had determined that someday, the entire country would drown. Waves had already washed over his island when big storms hit, so the news didn't sound entirely improbable. But it did sound scary.

"I was thinking there would be flooding, and maybe I would have to help my family survive  like building some big boat and paddle in the water to save my family," Peni remembers.

He rushed to his father, Telaki, who had already heard the rumors. But to Telaki, that all seemed very far away. "Don't worry about that," Telaki said to Peni. "We are just waiting for many years, not now."

But over the next decade, Telaki himself began to notice changes on their home island of Funafuti: high tides getting higher, eroding beaches, water coming up through the soil.

"I said to myself, 'Yes, the scientists are really telling the truth, so it's a good time to do something than wait until the last minute,'" said Telaki. He had decided that rather than stay in Tuvalu and watch the sea slowly overtake his island, it was time to change his fate. And as for the two houses he had built in Tuvalu? "I just got up and left them behind," said Telaki.

As global warming causes the oceans to rise, coastlines across the Pacific and beyond are at risk. Low-lying islands like the nine that make up Tuvalu could become uninhabitable over the next century, along with low coastal areas, such as parts of Bangladesh, that currently have millions of inhabitants. The world has yet to determine what will become of these displaced citizens.

But whether we've decided or not, a new kind of immigrant is already emerging. Some call them "climate refugees." The arrival of families like Telaki and Peni's in Australia and New Zealand -- countries that have already maxed out their quotas serving traditionally defined refugees -- has sparked international debate over whether those displaced by rising waters should be classified as refugees at all. And, if so, which countries should take them?

For the immigrants themselves, the challenges are more personal. Leaving Tuvalu means leaving behind small islands with few cars, where locals spend much of their days barefoot on the sand, living in quiet communities where one can sleep on a local airstrip if it's too hot indoors. With a population of 11,600, Tuvalu is the second-smallest nation in the world, after Vatican City. And its Pacific Ocean location, midway between Hawaii and Australia, makes it among the most remote. Adjusting to a city like Auckland, New Zealand -- a sprawling, Los Angeles-like crisscross of highways, mini-malls and meat pies -- isn't always easy.

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Penisita arrived in Auckland in 2001, in the middle of winter, carrying only a small suitcase and a carton of fish. His birthplace was 2,000 miles behind him.

As he walked off the plane and down the jetway, Peni began to notice that all the people around him were wearing sweaters and long pants; Peni had on only his T-shirt, shorts and sandals. He wandered to the arrivals area, shivering, to wait for his uncle to pick him up. A security guard brought him a blanket. There Peni spent his first moments in New Zealand, regaining warmth and cursing his poor planning: "Why did you do that, Peni? It's New Zealand now! It's a different island!"

Five years later, on a sunny summer day in Auckland, Peni, who is now 32, laughs at the memory. We're sitting on a small grassy slope beside a large soccer field not far from his house, waiting for the first game to start. Auckland Tuvaluans gather here every Saturday to watch teams representing the various home islands play each other, and the next game features the yellow-shirted Nui islanders against the green-shirted Nukalaelae. Back in Tuvalu, inter-island games like these don't happen much -- travel between islands often requires taking an overnight boat, and the island communities remain somewhat insular. But here in Auckland, a pan-Tuvaluan identity is emerging. "That yellow one is a very good team," Peni says.

The western outskirts of Auckland, where the Tuvaluan community is firmly ensconced, could pass for an American suburb, with big-box stores, a shiny Westfield mall, and sprawling boulevards. But West Auckland is also New Zealand's own Napa Valley, a place where vineyards vie for space with KFC and McDonald's, and where immigrant labor is welcome. Just beyond lie the strawberry fields, where many Tuvaluans, including Peni, work when they first arrive in New Zealand.

Tuvaluans are the newest Pacific Islander group to make their way to New Zealand. Between 1996 and 2001, the Tuvaluan community here more than doubled, growing from 900 to 2,000 people. And in the upcoming census, it's expected to be much higher than that. Tuvaluan families move to New Zealand for a host of reasons, including job opportunities (since the close of the phosphate mines on a nearby island 25 years ago, the population has had few options for paid employment) and to escape overcrowding on the islands. And now there is the threat of sea level rise.

Peni says he has no regrets; he knows he's come to a land of opportunity. Still, he misses his "gang" -- he and his friends got matching tattoos, and fished and played in the ocean together growing up. "I miss Tuvalu very much, very much," he says, looking out at the vast expanse of green. When Peni speaks English it's with a stutter; the words emerge from his mouth in sudden bursts. He quit doing seasonal work in the strawberry fields and got a comparatively cushier job as a home healthcare worker -- he says, "I get paid to watch TV!" -- but the transition hasn't entirely alleviated his financial worries. "In Tuvalu if I don't have a job, I'll still be alive because I don't have to pay for my home there," he says. "But it's a very hard life here. Here you must go and buy your own food. And if I have no money to pay for rent, maybe I'll have to sleep outside the house. I am very worried about that."

Still, he regards New Zealand as a safer home than Tuvalu. "When the water comes up, if I stay in Tuvalu maybe I'll be floating in the water," Peni says. "I don't like to die in the water, so I don't want to be in Tuvalu when the water is coming up." He laughs when he says this. For many Tuvaluans, it's so surreal to imagine Tuvalu actually not being around anymore, it's almost funny.

Next page: Tuvalu's sea level is rising by about 5.5 millimeters each year.