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Kiribati presses for training in potential climate refuge

ABC RADIO AUSTRALIA Updated December 9, 2009 10:10:39

The people of Kiribati have a lot riding on the Copenhagen talks, fearing theirs will be the first country completely lost to climate change. Rising sea levels have already forced whole villages on the coral atolls to relocate. And some believe Australia and New Zealand aren't doing enough to help the climate change refugees of Kiribati.

Presenter: Kerri Ritchie, New Zealand Correspondent
Speaker: Tessie Lambourne, Kiribati foreign secretary and climate change spokeswoman; Professor Jonathan Boston, Institute of Policy Studies at Victoria University in Wellington; Tony Whincup, Wellington photographer

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KERRI RITCHIE: One-hundred-thousand people call Kiribati home. They live simply in huts and basic houses on the dozens of low lying coral atolls north of Samoa which make up the country. The President Anote Tong fears that Kiribati will be completely covered by sea water within 50 years.

Tessie Lambourne is the country's Foreign Secretary and Climate Change Spokeswoman. She's flown to Copenhagen with her President.

TESSIE LAMBOURNE: One island, actually a whole village has been relocated. The sea has crept into their village and so they had to move.

KERRI RITCHIE: She says sea water is killing crops and has got into the drinking supply. How distressing is it for people to live with this every day?

TESSIE LAMBOURNE: This is something that our people are still trying to grapple with. Nobody wants to leave their homeland, for sure. Anywhere in the world people do not want to leave their homeland. But some people leave their homeland knowing that it will still be there if they want to go back. Our situation is different because there is a serious threat to our very own existence as a people and as a nation. People are trying to grapple with this thought. Are we really going to lose our home? And where are we going to live? Or our children or children's children? Where are they going to live? And how are they going to survive? We love our land. I think in the Pacific there is that spiritual link to the land because that's your link to your ancestors.

KERRI RITCHIE: The Kiribati Government wants Australia and New Zealand to provide its people with a safe haven from the rising sea in the years to come and help pay for training so they arrive with skills.

TESSIE LAMBOURNE: We do not want to relocate as environmental refugees. We want to be able to relocate on merit and with dignity. And this strategy will enable our people to do that. And it involves up-skilling for people to international labour standards so they can meet international labour standards and fill in labour gaps in other countries.

KERRI RITCHIE: Professor Jonathan Boston is with the Institute of Policy Studies at Victoria University in Wellington. He says both the Australian and New Zealand governments have no clear policies on climate change refugees.

JONATHAN BOSTON: Neither government to my knowledge have undertaken any serious attempt to introduce this particular issue to the public, specifying other the potential implications for New Zealand and Australia in terms of the numbers of climate change refugees from the South Pacific or in terms of the additional assistance that New Zealand and Australia will need to provide to assist small island states in the South Pacific to adapt to climate change. As it currently stands the issue really hasn't been raised by the two governments. But nor has it really been put adequately on the agenda by the academic communities or the non-governmental organisations.

KERRI RITCHIE: Wellington photographer Tony Whincup was awarded the Kiribati Order of Merit for his services to the country. For 30 years he's been capturing the changes in the nation's climate with his camera.

TONY WHINCUP: I mean the coral atolls are two metres high at the highest point. Most of them you could hit a golf ball from one side to the other except at one or two of the wider ones. If you try to go away from the sea one side you find yourself in the sea the other side. So Kiribati is one of those places where whatever, whichever way climate change goes - rising sea level, changes in temperature, changes in weather patterns, of violent storms - they're hit every which way.

KERRI RITCHIE: He says what's happening is heartbreaking.

TONY WHINCUP: What you must realise is that there's virtually no carbon footprint or pollution of the world from Kiribati. Kiribati uses its local materials. They, when they're finished they biodegrade. It's the polluting nations of the world that are having the impact upon one of the least polluting nations of the world. And I've never met any Kiribati who does not want to go back to their home. If climate change is going to be the factor of it then it's being destroyed by other nations many thousands of miles away.

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