Prepare to Accept Climate Migrants: Australian Experts

PACIFIC Island neighbours should prepare to accept structured mass migrations from smaller nations before they become climate refugees, according to a paper released on Tuesday by the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA).

Co-convener of the Ecology and Environment Special Interest Group at the PHAA and paper co-author Doctor Lea Marone said that many Pacific Island nations are already taking significant action to mitigate the effect of climate change on their own ways of life.

“They’re doing things like building protective coastal structures, growing coastal vegetation and reducing coastal mining,” Marone said.

“Also, they’re addressing food security with the development of climate resistant crop species and soil conservation and addressing water supply by doing rainwater capture, and purifying and using salt water for crop irrigation.”

However, Marone said that there would still likely be fallout from irreversibly rising sea levels as well as extreme weather events caused by climate change, and larger nations should be prepared to lend assistance and provide shelter to those who are displaced.

Last week, leaders at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru collectively signed a communique labelling climate change as ‘the single greatest threat’ to Pacific people, with smaller islands including Tuvalu and Kiribati expected to be uninhabitable by 2050.

“Really we need to be thinking of welcoming them — of some sort of migration arrangement,” Marone said.

With the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands numbering around 9.5 million, “all of the neighbors and the people with ties to the Pacific islands really need to be thinking about where they’re going to go.”

“We do know that larger countries produce more greenhouse gases and yet it’s the countries that produce the fewer greenhouse gases who are disproportionately affected by climate change and so arguably there is some moral obligation there,” Marone said.

“Although, I think the important message is that as neighbors, it’s the right thing to do,” he said.