Tales of climate change already effecting Tokelau, Kiribati (Another interview with Pelenise speaking)

[Stacey King]

ABC RADIO AUSTRALIA Updated Tue Jul 28, 2009 5:23pm AEST

A new report by a pair of NGOs says that Australia and New Zealand need to stop being part of the problem, and start being part of the solution for Pacific Islanders whose lives are already being impacted by climate change. The think-tank The Australian Institute, and aid agency Oxfam Australia, are pressing Australia to do more, warning that in the Asia Pacific region 75 million climate change refugees could be created in the next forty years. The report is timed just ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Cairns next week, where climate change is likely to be a major issue.

Presenter: Kerri Ritchie, New Zealand correspondent
Speaker: Foua Toloa, Premier of Tokelau; Palaneesi [Pelenise] Alofa Pidatatee (phonetic), resident of Tokelau; Barry Coates, executive director of Oxfam New Zealand


KERRI RITCHIE: Climate change is expected to be a hot topic at next week's Pacific Islands Forum in Cairns.

Listen: Windows Media


KERRI RITCHIE: When the New Zealand Prime Minister John Key visited Samoa this month, the leader of the tiny pacific nation of Tokelau boarded a run-down old boat and travelled for 24 hours so he could speak to him. Foua Toloa wants New Zealand and Australia to know that his people are in very real danger. He says climate change is already leaving its ugly mark on his country.

FOUA TOLOA: The forces and the devastation and even the inundation of the land is even worse. You recall, 1914 you have a cyclone, there was a huge cyclone, 1966 and then it lapsed. But the current years it's been "bang" - every year you expect a cyclone

KERRI RITCHIE: Foua Toloa says the rising sea waters are stealing their food.

FOUA TOLOA: Back home it's an atoll, very low. When salt water comes in, you know, it solidifies to the stage that you need so much rain, you know, to dissolve that salt. And it's killing a lot of vegetation, even the town, the swampy town (inaudible), it's effecting. So it takes a lot of time to break before the next cyclone.

KERRI RITCHIE: Further north from Tokelau are more coral atolls which make up the nation of Kiribati. Forty-eight-year-old Palaneesi Alofa Pidatatee (phonetic) lives in a rented house in the capital. She told Radio New Zealand all her coconut trees are dead and every day she fears for her country's future.

PALANEESI ALOFA PIDATATEE: I notice that the high tide, it's like a waterfall. Water is just flowing though my front yard and I chased the water and I found it was sea water.

KERRI RITCHIE: Barry Coates is the executive director of Oxfam New Zealand.

BARRY COATES: It's a community of 3,000 people offshore of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea who are having to move their people and 3,000 people is not an insignificant move and that's been an example of the kind of forced migration that's going to have to take place on a far larger scale.

KERRI RITCHIE: Barry Coates says if Australia and New Zealand don't press for a decent deal in climate change negotiations they're dooming these small Pacific Islands out of existence.

BARRY COATES: You know, if you can imagine for these atoll countries with a few metres above sea level as the highest point, they've got nowhere to go. We actually expect that Australia and New Zealand will be better neighbours and will do more themselves to put forward positive proposals into the negotiations.

KERRI RITCHIE: Recently the President of Kiribati pleaded with Australia and New Zealand to open their doors to any Kiribati citizens who become climate change refugees. Barry Coates from Oxfam believes that people who are displaced should first be moved to higher ground in their own country. If that's not possible, he thinks they should go to a nearby nation.

Kiribati resident Palaneesi Alofa Pidatatee (phonetic) doesn't want to go anywhere.

PALANEESI ALOFA PIDATATEE: We never thought that we have to move. No, that is not an option to us. We do not want to move. Because if we move away from our islands, we have lost everything. We will lose our identity. You cannot create Kiribati or Tuvalu or Fiji in someone else's country.

KERRI RITCHIE: Tokelau's Premier Foua Toloa says it is very worrying times for Pacific Islanders.

FOUA TOLOA: We are in the dilemma that the effect of whatever is done outside the control of Tokelau is impacting us. So when you say afraid, I'm very much. Maybe hopefully one day we don't wake up underneath the water.

[Cindy Flood]

you are absolutely right there Pente. one cannot just create Kiribati in someone's country....