Amid the controversy over government plans to impose a carbon tax, little attention has been paid to the news that some small island countries are in danger of being submerged beneath rising seas, creating a wave of “climate refugees.”
As early as 2001, the South Pacific nation of Tuvalu —one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — announced to the world that its people would eventually have to abandon its gradually disappearing national territory and evacuate en masse to New Zealand.
Tuvalu and other small island countries have never received much attention in international politics, but their continued existence is closely connected with Taiwan’s national security.
The global ecological crisis has forced countries around the world to reconsider the traditional way of thinking that puts national sovereignty above everything else. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a trend toward globalism, with sovereign countries collaborating and consulting to formulate international treaties and monitor their implementation.
Nations today seek multilateral solutions to global problems. However, before small nations have even had a chance to catch up with the tide of globalism, the most essential prerequisite for their existence as sovereign nations — their national territory — is already starting to sink beneath the surging waves.
In response, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) was formed in 1990, and 43 countries and territories have joined as members and observers. However, the key problems they face — ecology, sovereignty, migration, science and technology — are not something these countries, which lack resources and mostly lag behind in development, can hope to solve on their own. Hope can only lie with the technologically advanced and economically developed powers, most of which are big, continental countries.
However, the US’ continued refusal to be a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, low expectations on reaching a global pact at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December and Australia’s strict immigration policies that effectively deny entry to climate refugees from Tuvalu and other places show that developed states are still the ultimate arbiters in determining the distribution of global economic resources, and that globalism still takes second place to national interests.
While big countries on the European, American and Asian continents may be apathetic, Taiwan, as a small island country, cannot afford to ignore this issue. The predicament faced by Tuvalu and other island countries as the ocean threatens to submerge their territories will probably be the fate of Taiwan’s offshore islands and coastal areas within a few decades.
That being the case, we need to do more research on climate change, rising sea levels and related issues. We can also make the National Science Council’s Sustainable Taiwan Evaluation System a focus of flexible diplomacy.
Taiwan is a small island country in both political and geographical terms, so doing something about rising sea levels and related problems is an urgent matter. Most of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies are developing island or coastal nations. Taiwan being perhaps the biggest and strongest among these small island nations, the government would be wise to help friendly countries find a solution, for their benefit and for our ours.
RSS