Ninety-four New Zealand schools – including at least 11 Catholic schools – are at risk of flooding. Niwa says sea level changes could create flooding around school buildings and roads. Then it would be difficult for children to get to and from their classrooms. Infrastructure would be affected. Seawater in pipes would cause school toilets Read more
The archbishop of Suva, Peter Loy Chong, says parts of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu, are on course to disappear because of rising sea levels. He said: “We can see it with our own eyes – the ocean levels are increasing each year, so the island [of Viti Levu] is disappearing.” The archbishop said “Pacific Read more
Rising sea levels could make most Pacific Ocean atolls uninhabitable by the middle of the century — or possibly sooner. The “tipping point” depends on the rate of climate change — and above all the stability of Antarctica. These are the conclusions reached in a recently published study partly funded by the Pentagon’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Read more
Fiji has turned a tiny part of Germany into a tropical Pacific island as it leads global negotiations on climate change, and so securing a stage for islanders’ worries about rising sea levels. Fiji is the first small island state to preside at UN climate negotiations since they began in the 1990s. The country’s chief Read more
The Pacific Island nations often cited as the most likely to disappear because of rising sea levels include Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu. Kiribati has a population of just over 100,000. The Marshall Islands about 52,000. And Tuvalu close to 10,000. The problem for small Pacific Island nations is that on a world scale Read more
No other country in the world has the courage or compassion like Fiji to come forward and help the people of Kiribati and Tuvalu. Kiribati President Anote Tong publicly thanked the nation of Fiji in a speech at the Paris climate summit for agreeing to take in his people should the worst come to pass. “It’s Read more
A new study found that over the last decade, 15 percent of people in Tuvalu (population 10,857), 10 percent of people in Nauru (population 10,084) and 1.3 percent of people in Kiribati (population 103,058) moved abroad. Many others — about 10,000 — tried to migrate, but could not. Others became “internal migrants,” placing strains on Read more
Climate change—much like ethnic cleansing—singles out certain populations, presenting migration problems every bit as serious as those of political, religious, and ethnic refugees. Extinction is hardly less serious than genocide, yet its quarry have no legal basis to relocate. Pasifika nations have little to no voice in international energy policy, and exert, at most, limited Read more
A statement from a meeting of Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania has expressed concern about “the indisputable fact of rising sea levels.” “In some cases, entire regions and nations are under threat from the indisputable fact of rising sea levels,” the statement says. “Examples from this part of the world include the Carteret Islands, Read more