If you came into a fortune all of a sudden, how would you spend it? And if you knew that your world as you know it was about to disappear, what would you do with the time you had got left? For most of us, these are two theoretical questions with which we entertain ourselves through long hours of procrastination, while stuck on a very long flight, or during an especially boring evening at the local. But for the people of Tuvalu, a tiny state comprising nine islands in the South Pacific, these are the only two questions that count.
In 1999, Tuvalu, with its population of 11,000, was the third-poorest state in the world. But all of a sudden, salvation was found, and from an extremely unlikely and unexpected direction. Tuvalu received a domain name on the Internet, which was none other than the letters ".tv". A communication company from California was quick to get in touch -- buying the domain for the bargain price of US$40 million. For the Tuvalans, with an average annual income of about US$1,000, this was a life-changing sum. The islanders became, or at least reacted as if they had become, very rich.
This sudden wealth was accompanied, almost concurrently, by a firm forecast of doom. The people of Tuvalu became aware of a dark shadow looming over their very existence. Due to global warming, and because the islands are only 3m above sea level, Tuvalu is likely to be the first state in the world to be submerged by rising water levels. According to scientific estimates, the islands will be severely flooded within the next 15 to 20 years, and by the end of the century, the islands will have disappeared from sight altogether.
Signs of the catastrophe awaiting Tuvalu are already apparent on its slender ground. Ponds of seawater appear here and there, stretches of beaches are swallowed by the waves, the roots of trees are rotting by the ocean. Cyclones, which used to hit the area as rarely as every 15 years, now appear a few times every season, and the rains they bring cause temporary floods, markers of bleaker days to come. But still, the Tuvalans had their newly-acquired money. With that they could buy themselves a new future. Or at least borrow more time.
Paul Lindsay, a documentary filmmaker, took these questions with him all the way to Tuvalu, and came back with a story which seems almost too metaphorical to be true. Defiant in the face of the rising water, the Tuvalans are using the windfall to develop the land that is soon to disappear. Buildings are being raised, nightclubs, restaurants and hotels are being planned and built, newly bought cars are cruising on newly laid roads. Modernization is hitting the islands at the 11th hour. The residents do not think it is strange.
"Just because we are sinking, it doesn't mean we don't want to raise our standards of living," Lindsay was told by Sam Teo, Tuvalu's minister for natural resources.
Of the US$40 million raised by the Internet deal, US$10 million was used to tarmac the islands' 19km of roads. Before 1999 there were four cars on the islands. The Tuvalans used to walk or cycle everywhere. When the money arrived, soon enough Tuvalu was flooded by cars and motorcycles. The minister for natural resources, who was in charge of paving the roads, owns one of the two gasoline stations on the main island.
The motor revolution accompanied a wave of other imported foods and goods and soon had an unexpected consequence. Many Tuvalans, having given up their daily exercise, were introduced to obesity, raised blood pressure and diabetes. Others discovered that the maintenance of their new vehicles was far beyond their means, and that the luxury itself is hardly necessary in a state that is just 26km2. A huge area at the center of the tropical paradise is now covered with abandoned cars and other rubbish.
"I see it and feel disgusted," said the disillusioned minister.
Other islanders speak of the loss of community solidarity.
"People used to give you things you needed for free," Eseta Penatuse said. "Now everything is worth money. People are ashamed to ask their neighbors for things they don't need any more."
For a while, vast amounts of money were spent in an attempt to raise international awareness of Tuvalu's predicament. Tuvalu joined the UN, at a cost of US$1.5 million a year. In diplomatic terms, membership is not that expensive, but renting an office and secretarial services in New York is. The
delegate to the UN is the prime minister's brother, and the Tuvalan delegation was especially active in promoting the Kyoto Protocol to fight global warming.
Another politically daring idea was raised by former prime minister Koloa Talake. He pushed a plan to sue the world's two main polluters, the US (the biggest polluter in absolute values) and Australia (the biggest polluter per capita) in an international court, for causing the global warming that is bringing about Tuvalu's predicament.
Such a bold enterprise would have put Tuvalu on the international map of environmental struggle, and turned it into an icon for green organizations worldwide, but Talake's initiative was choked, not by international opposition, but by Tuvalans themselves -- they voted him out of power.
The prevailing public sentiment was that Tuvalu can't afford the kind of legal representation that is needed to take on giants such as the US and Australia in court law.
In Tuvalu, people felt that too much money had been spent on diplomacy to no avail. They wanted speedy development, openly hoping to enjoy the money that comes into the public till.
"Many self-righteous people in the West would judge them for giving up the fight. But all the Tuvalans wanted is what we all want: comfortable houses, cars, good lives," Lindsay said.
Talake was not the only prime minister to be replaced: Tuvalu has had three election campaigns and three governments in the past five years. But while the political system wrangles, the sea keeps going up, and the dollars keep drifting away.
The problems, writ large for the government, are no less pertinent for individual residents. Joe Malafea, a bubbly, diligent and camp hotel owner from Tuvalu, was convinced that the islands' predicament would bring about a sudden rush of eco-tourism. He decided to be ready for the visiting hordes. He wanted to build a cafe, a bar and a bakery on his ancestors' burial grounds.
In order to complete his venture, he was even willing to dig them all out and bury than in one common grave, to gain more space. Malafea died a few months ago of diabetes, before he could see his vision come true.
Neither was he the sole entrepreneur in Tuvalu. The Penatuse family vowed to give up their successful fishing business after they lost one of their sons to the sea. After the tearful traditional memorial service, they diligently started building a night club, the first of its kind in Tuvalu.
Sol Oseni Penatuse, who leads the enterprise, had suppressed the thought of the rising water with partial success. When asked about it, standing on the dancing floor of his soon-to-be-launched discotheque, he seems startled.
"Yeah," he mumbled, "It is really a problem ... Maybe I will drown with all the money I spent here."
But all Tuvalans know that they are not likely to die of old age on their islands. What to do otherwise is trickier.
Australia is far from enthusiastic about letting Tuvalans in, and New Zealand agrees to absorb them on the basis of an annual quota. The hope of keeping the tiny nation as one community after the flood is highly unlikely.
After the eight months he spent among the Tuvalans, Lindsay is not sentimental about white sands and turquoise waters.
"There are no more paradises. Tuvalu is struggling to keep its sense of social solidarity in the face of progress. Nowadays, even paradise comes with a price tag," he said.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations