By Kristall Laursen, Global Giving Network Manager
I am from a small town in Iowa. I wasn’t born there, and I don’t live there now—but my tiny town of 700 people will always play a big role in influencing the person I am today. I moved away for the same reasons so many people leave their home, for new opportunities and experiences. While I still feel connected to Iowa, I don’t actively miss it. Perhaps because I know it isn’t in danger.
That is different than what many Pacific Islanders know about their home.
The Pacific Islands are facing many immediate threats to their way of life, with climate change topping the list. Pacific Island communities are fighting to survive extreme weather events, rising sea levels, dwindling agriculture and fisheries, and the spread of climate-related diseases.
Over the past few years, the impacts of climate change have become so severe that the entire nations, including Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Vanuatu, have been flooded by several inches of seawater. Often referred to as the “first climate refugees,” Papua New Guinea’s Carteret Islanders have been forced to relocate to higher ground or they have moved from their sinking islands all together.
On April 26, I flew to Sydney, Australia, to meet with the group of experts who direct Greengrants to local leaders in the Pacific Islands. These people come from all around the Pacific Islands, so Australia is the easiest location to gather. Meetings like this allow advisors the time to review and approve a chunk of grants and discuss important issues facing their communities.
Over the course of three days, the advisors discussed the great need for additional resources in island communities, new grantmaking strategies to address deep-sea mining, and the increased risk of environmental disasters. The group approved grants focused on community education and awareness, marine conservation, and waste management.
One of the new grantees, the Kousapw Palikir Community Group from Pohnpei, was displaced by a landslide in 1997. Having been forced to relocate to the top of a mountain, the community struggles without daily access to fresh water. Global Greengrants granted $5,000 to help the group purchase water tanks and educate other communities about how and why to conserve water, greatly improving the community’s situation and those around them by increasing access to water and improving local abilities to conserve.
For the millions of islanders living abroad, issues like these are of vital importance, as their connection to the culture at home remains strong, even hundreds or thousands of miles away. Their generosity towards home is evident in the amount of remittance they send to islands each year, but they alone cannot fight the increasing threats.
True resilience in the Pacific Islands will take a mix of community leadership, keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees centigrade, and increased support for local solutions that protect communities’ futures.
Photo: Marc Caraveo, CC-BY-ND 2.0