Fearing that climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago, the leaders of Kiribati are considering an unusual backup plan: moving the populace to Fiji.
Kiribatian President Anote Tong (湯安諾) said on Friday that his Cabinet last week endorsed a plan to buy nearly 2,430 hectares on Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu. He said the fertile land, being sold by a church group for about US$9.6 million, could provide an insurance policy for Kiribati’s entire population of 103,000, though he hopes it will never be necessary for everyone to leave.
“We would hope not to put everyone on one piece of land, but if it became absolutely necessary, yes, we could do it,” Tong said. “It wouldn’t be for me, personally, but would apply more to a younger generation. For them, moving won’t be a matter of choice. It’s basically going to be a matter of survival.”
Kiribati, which straddles the equator near the international dateline, has found itself at the leading edge of the debate on climate change because many of its atolls rise just a few meters above sea level.
Tong said some villages have already moved and there have been increasing instances of seawater contaminating the island’s underground fresh water, which remains vital for trees and crops. He said changing rainfall, tidal and storm patterns pose as least as much threat as ocean levels, which so far have risen only slightly.
Some scientists have estimated the current level of sea rise in the Pacific at about 2mm per year. Many scientists expect that rate to accelerate due to climate change.
Fiji, home to about 850,000 people, is about 2,250km south of Kiribati. However, just what people there think about potentially providing a home for thousands of their neighbors remains unclear. Tong said he’s awaiting full parliamentary approval for the land purchase, which he expects next month, before discussing the plan formally with Fijian officials.
Fijian government spokeswoman Sharon Smith-Johns said several agencies are studying Kiribati’s plans and the government would release a formal statement this week.
Kiribati, which was known as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands when it was a British colony, has been an independent nation since 1979.
Tong has been considering other unusual options to combat climate change, including shoring up some Kiribati islands with sea walls and even building a floating island. He said this week that the latter option would likely prove too expensive, but that he hopes reinforcing some islands would ensure that Kiribati continues to exist in some form even in a worst-case scenario.
“We’re trying to secure the future of our people,” he said. “The international community needs to be addressing this problem more.”
Tong said he hoped that the Fiji land would represent just one of several options for relocating people. He said that the land was three times larger than the atoll of Tarawa, home to more than half of Kiribati’s population.
Although like much of the Pacific, Kiribati is poor — its annual per capita GDP is US$1,600 — Tong said the country has plenty of foreign reserves to draw from for the land purchase. The money, he said, comes from phosphate mining on the archipelago in the 1970s.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the