Australia offers refuge to Tuvaluans as rising sea levels threaten Pacific archipelago

Canberra announced on Friday that it is offering climate refuge to Tuvaluans, unveiling the terms of a pact that would enable citizens of the 26-square kilometre archipelago – the fourth smallest state in the world – to move to Australia to “live, study and work”. 

Located near the Equator, the island nation of Tuvalu is comprised of nine reef islands and atolls that rise an average of only two metres above sea level. Due to rising sea levels driven by climate change, the low-lying land is forecast to be submerged by Pacific waters by the end of the century. 

The new pact between Australia and Tuvalu, signed by prime ministers Anthony Albanese and Kausea Natano, has been described as “groundbreaking ” by University of New South Wales professor and refugee law expert Jane McAdam. 

“It’s the first agreement to specifically deal with climate-related mobility,” McAdam said. 

Natano hailed the agreement as a ” beacon of hope” for his nation. 

According to the pact, which will have to be ratified by both countries before coming into effect, Tuvaluan refugees will have access to education and healthcare, as well as financial and family support in Australia. 

To avoid a damaging “brain drain”, the number of Tuvaluans able to move to Australia will initially be capped at 280 per year. 

Climate migrants 

Australia’s offer to host its South Pacific neighbours marks a new step towards the recognition of climate change refugees. 

In previous years, Tuvaluans and people from other Pacific islands seeking asylum in nearby countries such as New Zealand have seen their requests rejected, as climate change is not recognised as a basis for obtaining refugee status by the 1951 Refugee Convention. 

Even the term “climate refugee” has no legal definition and is not endorsed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) meanwhile defines “the movement of a person or groups of persons who, predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive change in the environment due to climate change, are obliged to leave their habitual place of residence, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, within a State or across an international border,” as “climate migration”.   

This could be applied to the entire Tuvaluan population which is currently threatened by the consequences of climate change. As the archipelago’s shorelines continue to recede, its inhabitants could eventually all be driven from their homes and become some of the world’s first climate migrants.  

Foretold threat 

Many have already warned against the climate challenges that Tuvaluans currently face. 

Fanny Héros, a project officer and scientific journalist in French climate action association Alofa Tuvalu, warned back in 2008 that “the inhabitants of Tuvalu will become the world’s first climate refugees“. 

In 2009, then Tuvaluan prime minister Apisai Ielemia said his archipelago was threatened by rising sea levels due in part to global warming caused by human activity, at the Copenhagen Summit. 

Tuvalu sounded the alarm once again in November 2021 at COP26 in Glasgow.  

“Climate change and sea level rise are deadly and existential threats to Tuvalu and low-lying island atoll countries,” Tuvalu’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Simon Kofe said in a video statement, standing knee-deep in water. 

“We are sinking, but so is everyone else,” he said.  

“No matter if we feel the impacts today like in Tuvalu, or in a hundred years, we will all still feel the dire effects of this global crisis one day,” Kofe said. 

Tuvalu’s top diplomat delivered the same message again the following year, at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, as he urged the international community to act swiftly to stop the devastating effects of global warming on the archipelago. 

The Tuvaluan government announced earlier this year the creation of a digital version of its territory, “The First Digital Nation“, to raise awareness of the island nation’s plight, and to allow it to continue to exist as a state even after all of its land has been submerged.

“We want to be able to take a snapshot of what culture is today, and allow my children and grandchildren to have that same experience wherever they are in the world,” Kofe said in an interview with nonprofit organisation Long Now.

“So even if the physical territory is lost, we would never lose the knowledge, culture, and way of life that Tuvaluans have experienced and lived for many centuries,” he said. 

According to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sea levels have risen by around 23 centimetres since 1880. This increase has accelerated steadily over the past quarter-century, to the extent that sea levels are predicted to rise by an additional 30 cm by 2050, and 77 cm by 2100. 

This means that half of Tuvalu’s territory, which has already lost two coral reefs to rising sea levels, would be underwater by 2050. And by 2100, the archipelago would be wiped off the map. 

And yet, shrinking land mass is not the only challenge that Tuvalu faces. 

Tuvalu’s capital, Funafuti, has also witnessed severe drought, water shortages and contaminated groundwater due to rising sea levels. The difficult climate-related conditions have subsequently translated into widespread malnutrition and displacement on the archipelago. 

‘Good neighbourliness’

“Australia and Tuvalu are family. And today we are elevating our relationship to a more integrated and comprehensive partnership,” Albanese said in a tweet on social media platform X on Friday as he announced the inking of the pact baptised ‘Falepili Union’ with Natano. 

“Falepili is a Tuvaluan word for the traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect. Put simply, it means being a good neighbour,” Albanese said. 

The two countries will work together on “climate adaptation, work arrangements and security” in a new partnership which “recognises climate change as the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of Tuvalu”, he added. 

While some lauded the new pact, others pointed out the irony as they highlighted Australia’s share of responsibility for global warming. 

“Australia helping the people of Tuvalu who are suffering from the effects of climate change. The same Australia that has undermined every international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and is behind many environmentally disastrous projects,” one user said in a tweet. 

Another quipped: “[The] bloody magnanimity of the hero [Albanese] who will throw Tuvalu a lifeline if the island succumbs to the effects of climate change, all the while continuing to sell coal and gas to countries like China and India”. 

Australia’s economic reliance on coal and gas exports has long been a point of friction with its many Pacific neighbours, who face massive economic and social costs from wilder weather and rising sea levels. 

While Australia contributed just over one percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, it is one of the world’s top exporters of coal which remains largely responsible for global warming. 

According to Geoscience Australia, the country was in 2021 the world’s largest exporter of liquid natural gas (LNG), another cause of rising global average temperatures. 

Albanese said developed nations needed to start shouldering more responsibility as developing countries bore the brunt of the climate crisis. 

Tuvalu is far from being the only island nation threatened by climate change: others such as the Maldives (Indian Ocean), Kiribati (Polynesia), the Marshall Islands and Nauru (Oceania) are also becoming increasingly vulnerable in the face of rising sea levels and multiplying natural disasters, a result of global warming. 

(with AFP)

This article has been adapted from the original in French.