Not refuge but sanctuary

Brain twister: She searches for sanctuary on the seashore.

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post sees our family living it up at a Pacific party in the Holiday Inn, London (£15 a ticket, bargain for dinner, quiz and Pacific chat). Nell was allowed to give a garland to the Fijian high commissioner and won a raffle prize, so results all round.  But the take home message for our family was all about how to offer a safe home for those whose homes will be destroyed by climate change. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).  

Left to right: Chris and Agnes.

Words matter - everyone knows that. But at a fantastic Pacific Islands party at the end of September 2012 - run by Agnes Benson from Kiribati (via the Herts/Bucks co-ordinating committee) and Chris Luxton, who used to live in Papua New Guinea and is the leading light, well chairwoman, of Pacific Islands Society UK and Ireland (PISUKI) -  I found out just how much words matter.

The talk at our table turned to climate change and the impacts this will have on Pacific islanders who are in line to lose their homes. Those in Tuvalu and Kiribati are at the front line of sea level rise, but of course that's the drama. Earlier problems are changes to the water table - which makes drinking water harder to find and salinates the soil. If you can't grow food, or get water (other than from rainwater), you're starting to be on an island that's not fit for human habitation.

So what will happen to those nations?

The Pacific has some experience of resettlement. In 1946 the Banabans were forced off their island (in Kiribati) and resettled in Rabi island, Fiji (many also live near the airport at Nadi) so the phosphate could be strip-mined by the British (who only years later paid compensation for this piece of mineral terrorism).

Kiribati has enshrined in its constitution minority rights for Banabans. How long can that last if  more Kirbati people are obliged to upsticks? It is after all a very flat place, one where there is nowhere to go if the unthinkable happens. Ditto Tuvalu.

Can you imagine a generous country like New Zealand allowing a state within a state? Could part of Auckland be turned into Tuvalu, say? Will Tuvalu be allowed a UN vote (it only became a member in 2000)? Or an Olympic team (they first competed in 2008 at Beijing, and here is a video of their proud weightlifter at London 2012)? Will Tuvalu still be allowed a government? And what will those exiled Tuvalu people be known as, "climate refugees" perhaps?

Absolutely wrong word say several people at the event. The countries that have caused these problems, predominantly those that developed their industries the earliest, have to learn to offer "sanctuary". It is simply an accident of geography that the disastrous impacts of climate change on nations happens to them, rather than us.

Over to you
I'm going to be thinking about this for a while, sanctuary not refugee, but wondered what readers of this blog thought?

Climate refugees on wobbly bridge

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 11, and Nell, 8, spent three happy months during summer 2007 travelling around Britain. Now we're home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint.

Friends arrive during half term for city sightseeing so we take them on London's best visitor route, the number 4 bus down to St Paul's Cathedral. Nearby the wobbly bridge over the Thames has sprouted mini tents. It's an idea by the German artist Hermann Josef Hack for Oxfam's Here & Now campaign timed to coincide with two-day EU heads of state and . The art installation is in seven cities including Amsterdam and Brussels.

Lola, Nell and Xander (now 10 and born in land-locked Zimbabwe) stretch out amongst the tents and get snapped while I calculate that the tents are 20cm high - just about the height the sea's already risen since 1900. You can find out more about what sea level rise means in the excellent new book for kids Gaia Warriors, by Nicola Davies which is published by Walker Books, £9.99, buy from Amazon.

20cm doesn't look much, but for countries like Tuvalu, or the Maldives where land is barely 1m above sea level this is serious stuff. No surprise that the big London march timed for the Copenhagen COP on Saturday December 5 is to be called The Wave. Find out more here.

Not everyone is impressed by story campaigns. I overhear an irritated woman on the bridge complaining that someone will break their ankle on the cardboard tents. She doesn't lack imagination, but is clearly having trouble with empathy. Does she know that The Maldives has a dynamo head of state, who has already conducted a cabinet meeting underwater to alert the world to his country's sinking future (lots more about the Maldives plight here). To date Tuvalu is less good at climate change PR but the funniest book I've ever read, Tales of the Tikongs, is by Epeli Hau'ofa from Tuvalu so clearly there are skilled wits on the islands who could if they wanted to do so.


What a loss it will be to have either of these countries turned Atlantis.

Pacific pleasures

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer 2007 traveling around Britain. Now we’re home but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola (with pic of Lola and Nell strictly come dancing the Pacific way)

Aloha! It’s not all dancing in the Pacific, but at this year’s Pacific Island Society we were treated to a taste of Oceania with dancing from Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Cook Islands. There was a particularly energetic and expert show from Kiribati which has set up the Beats of the Pacific group to delight the UK. It’s a big group which has drummers, MC, mothers, single women and children as young as three swirling their grass skirts and lavalavas (hips left to right and round and round) in the most astonishing displays of dexterity. There were three blokes dancing who stole the show with their warrior poses, paddle action and proud Polynesian energy. They tried to get some of the crowd to join in, but with the average age of the audience at over 60 I think some people’s hips may need replacing sooner than anticipated. Not mine though as I was too chicken (and coldy) to go for it. In contrast Lola and Nell took to the dance floor happily.

Despite such a happy event it is not easy to forget that the people of Tuvalu – 11,000 of them – are facing enormous change in the next few years thanks to climate change which is causing sea levels to rise. Because their homeland islands just don’t have hills the Tuvaluans are likely to be the first climate change environmental refugees of an anticipated 1-3 million. New Zealand has agreed to take 75 per cent of all Tuvaluan migrants each year, which may be generous but switching from island life to Kiwi consumerism is hardly to be looked forward to – unless there’s no other alternative.