Tuvalu faces sea level rise

February 2004

By Michael Field

A young girl sat on the exposed roots of a large tree and watched the sea-water bubbling from the ground around her. Nearby, about as far from the sea as it is possible to be in Tuvalu, Tuaga Petelu, looked at the water surrounding his home.

“There is a change in the sea-level…. What can we do, we have to wait and see what’s happening.”

Tuvalu in February is spring tide season which sometimes, in an apocalyptic kind of way, results in waves crashing over the reef, but this year was insidious with sea-water seeping out of the ground. No one was swept away but sea-water flooded the compost pits in which people have been growing their root crops for centuries.

For the around 150 genuine tourists who make it to Tuvalu each year it is easy to slip into a kind of paradise view. No television service nor advertising and no one takes credit cards. The solitary bank closes each day at 1pm because there is not much cash. An hour or so before sunset, Funafuti’s young and courting gather on the runway which takes up much of Fongafale islet’s space. Soccer goal-posts and netball posts are dragged out and suddenly there is an explosion of physical activity. Children skip make-shift surf boards across the sea-water puddles, seeping from ground around the edges of the runway and taxi-way.

Air Fiji, majority owned by the Tuvalu Government, flies a bi-weekly service out of Suva, Fiji, with its 30-seat Embraer Brasilia. A cargo, fuel and passengers balancing act ensures there is always a waiting list for passengers. As the plane approaches Funafuti a fire engine runs up the unlit, unfenced runway. The humble control tower hoists a red flag and from the nearby police station a constable strolls across to the nearby intersection to ensure nobody drives across the runway.

There is another side; a simple atoll life, threatened not by global warming as by AIDS, alcohol and little money. Often the plane carries Tuvalu men returning from serving on ships around the world. At any given time around 400 are aboard on mainly German ships, providing Tuvalu with the bulk of its income. Each year 60 men graduate from the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute on Amatuku inlet, north of Fongafale, headed by Jonathan Gayton. Tuvaluans are popular because they are physically strong and have a culture of sea faring.

“Tuvaluans have the advantage of being cheap too, cheaper than Filipinos, and they are good at their jobs,” Gayton said.

Officially Tuvalu has no HIV/AIDS but the government knows some day it will arrive with its returning sons. Seamen with change in their pockets and beer at just $2 a can means they pass their days in a haze. Even the Finance Minister Bikenibeu Paeniu maintains what passes as a bar on Funafuti: a locked room full of beer and rudimentary benches under the stars. Hung over men wake on the nearby beaches and late in the afternoon drunk men snooze or wobble their way home.

Tuvalu has become a poster-child for the environmental movement, innocent victims of the West’s profligate gas-guzzling, carbon emitting ways. Prime Minister Saufatu Sopo'aga has no doubt his country is threatened by global warming related climate change.

“The evidence is there, and our nation is suffering because of it, what else can we say?” Sopo'aga said.

“We do not need further scientific research into this global phenomena on sea -level rising; it is already there. We are talking about the extraordinary high tides now…. It is now becoming common to Tuvalu….

“We cannot turn back the tide ourselves, single-handed. We hope the industrialised countries would be able to help us.”

He understood the West’s motives in building its industries to build the lives of their people: “But Tuvaluans have future generations too who want to enjoy the same resource, the same kind of life that Tuvaluans have today.”

Meteorologist Hilia Vavae says sea temperatures and the sea level are rising.

“Global warming is playing a part,” she said, standing in the sea water beneath her feet, “no, not at all, it was manmade.”

The University of Hawaii put a tide gauge on a wharf in 1991 that turned out to be sinking itself. Since 1993 the 14-nation Australian funded South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project has been monitoring sea-level and has yet to come up with any significant numbers. During El Nino events Funafuti seems to rise out of the sea and some evidence is suggesting that the island on a geological time scale is also coming up.

At Amatuku 140 years ago the London Missionary Society erected a stone classroom, now the oldest building in Tuvalu. It now floods.

“Why would the missionaries have built the school in a place that floods every spring tide,” Gayton says, suggesting it did not when it was built.

There is a suspicion though that the problem is not global, but local. Fongafale, where the worst of the flooding is occurring, happens also to have around 6,000 people living in an area little bigger than the average city park. They have used the money made from selling their successful Dot TV internet name to pave the roads, and Taiwan has built a large new three storey administration building which towers over the islet. This might well be having its own severe environmental impact. Human occupation has rendered the once crucial freshwater lens too brackish to use. Inevitably one asks whether people should be living on low-lying atolls at all. Around 10 kilometres across the lagoon, on the other side of Fongafale is unoccupied Tepuka islet. As close as perfection as it seems possible to get to these days, it shows no signs of sinking.

The single biggest environmental insult to the atoll is the runway. Ahead of the November 1943 Battle of Tarawa the Americans cut down all the coconut trees and built a runway on Fongafale. To do it they dug out large pits at either end of the runway, in the language of the time, borrowing the sand and coral. These “borrow pits” went below sea-level, and remain that way today. Tuvaluans have not helped their cause by turning them into pig pens and rubbish dumps, severely blighting the landscape with stench and mess. Various plans over the years to tidy them up and perhaps fill them in have come to nothing, mostly because Tuvalu has no soil to spare.

As the tides flooded the land around Funafuti in February, and Maldives’ President Abdul Gayoom telephoned Sopo’aga to express the solidarity of one low-lying nation for another, Tuvaluans appeared relaxed. Sopo’aga says his people believe God created Tuvalu, literally for them.

“They are very strong Christians and they believe God created this world, including Tuvalu… and the people of Tuvalu, so they believe that God would not desert them, that God would look after them.”

Sopo'aga rejected the idea his people might have to leave: “As long as Tuvalu is above sea water there will be people staying here.”

Ends

Tuvalu Facts

+ Tuvalu means “eight together”, a reference to the eight populated atolls.

+ With nine atolls it has a land area of just 26 square kilometres -- less than the area occupied by the city of Suva.

+ Funafuti is around 1100 kilometres north of Fiji

+ Tuvalu has a population of around 11,300, with nearly 6,000 on Fongafale Islet on Funafuti

+ Its people are mostly Polynesian whose language is closely related to Samoan

+ Blackbirders in the 1860s plundered Tuvalu and European diseases nearly wiped the population out.

+ In 1877 Tuvalu came under British jurisdiction and in 1916 became part of the Gilbert (Kiribati) and Ellice Island colony.

+ Tuvalu became independent in 1978.

+ Princess Margaret “gave” Tuvalu its independence -- except she was “indisposed” aboard a warship and failed to show for flag raising,

+ The United States claimed Funafuti as its territory, only giving up the claim in 1978.

+ A trust fund for Tuvalu, administered by Australia, New Zealand, Tuvalu and the United Kingdom, is worth around US$35 million.

+ Tuvalu makes around US$8 million a year with its Dot TV Internet suffix.

So what is sea level?

Understanding atolls involves coming to terms with tides and when somebody says Tuvalu is no more than five metres above sea-level it’s a question of perspective. A ship’s captain and a land agent have different views.

Two tides are important: the highest astronomical tide (HAT) and the Lowest astronomical tide (LAT). These are the extremes which can occur under average meteorological conditions and under any combination of astronomical conditions.

HAT and LAT do not account for storm surges and so in unusual circumstances lower or higher tides are possible.

Mean Sea Level (MSL) is the “still water level” between tides, with variations over time averaged out. It is not necessarily half-way between HAT and LAT.

This year Tuvalu experienced a spring tide of 3.1 metres, prompting confusion over what was really happening. That tide was 3.1 metres above the LAT; important information for a sailor trying to avoid rocks. But the statement that Tuvalu is no more than five metres above sea-level is measured not from LAT, but from MSL -- which means more land for a real estate agent to sell.

Spring tides -- or “king tides” in Australia -- occur at the full or new moon when the Sun and the Moon are lined up with the Earth.

ends

Copyright: Michael Field