“As Sea Level Rises, Fijian Village Begins To Relocate Citizens”

Bodysurfers ride a wave at Natadola Beach in Natadola, Fiji, on Nov. 5, 2013        AP Photo/Nick Perry          

By Emily Atkin January 29, 2014

Faced with rising sea levels that flood farmlands and seep into homes during high tide, residents of the Fijian village of Vunidogolo are packing their bags.

The village is the first to have its citizens relocated under the country’s “climate change refugee” program, according to a report in the Fiji Times. The relocation has included the construction of 30 houses, fish ponds, and farms, which reportedly cost the small island’s government about $879,000.

“All 30 houses have been fully constructed, painted and prepared well for the villagers,” Fiji Acting Commissioner Northern Alipate Bolalevu told the Times. “The Fisheries Department is in charge of the fish ponds and the Agriculture Ministry will help the villagers with farming practices.”

The village’s relocation is not the first instance where people have sought “refugee”-like status from the affects of climate change. Last year, 37-year-old Ioane Teitota and his family attempted to legally seek refugee status in New Zealand, having left Kiribati — a low-lying Pacific Island nation near the equator — in 2007 due to sea level rise. Though his request was eventually rejected, one of Teiota’s core arguments for refugee status was that humans cause exorbitant carbon emissions, which are responsible for rising sea levels and changes of weather patterns. Therefore, he argued, climate change constitutes an indirect but worldwide persecution on he and his family.

The New Zealand court called the argument “novel” and “optimistic,” but ultimately ruled that it was unconvincing. If it were adopted, the court said, then millions of people experiencing the effects of climate change could seek refuge in New Zealand or any other county.

Meanwhile, Fiji’s National Climate Change Policy says that it expects global sea level changes to more than double by the end of the century, based on projections from the fourth U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report. The IPPC’s Fifth Assessment Report released in September, however, was even worse, predicting that ocean levels would rise by as much as three feet by the end of the century due to climate change.

The country’s 2012 policy document also notes that average monthly sea levels at the country’s Lautoka tide have been increasing at a rate of 4.6 millimeter per decade since 1993, though satellite observations indicate that the sea level is changing at the faster rate of 6 millimeters per year over the same period.

While Fiji is a minor emitter of greenhouse gases on a global scale, the country has nonetheless expressed a desire to commit to reducing its own emissions. However, the country’s climate policy document notes that Fiji faces “major barriers to improved energy efficiency,” most notably lack of information, inadequate pricing signals, and a lack of standards for imported appliances and machinery.

Rising sea levels in Fiji also stand to affect the country’s tourism industry. With the island receiving more than 500,000 visitors per year, the industry is the largest and fastest-growing, contributing about 17 percent to Fiji’s overall gross domestic product and employing approximately 40,000.

 

The Fate Of Our Farms

 

The federal farm bill runs out in September, and so far, there is no compromise in Washington to extend it. To understand what lawmakers should do, you first must know all the bad the current policy does. (AprilMuse/flickr)

“Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms, and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

–William Jennings Bryan, 1896

Presidential candidate Bryan was biased — he hailed from Nebraska and the nation’s breadbasket — but he had a point. Even today, when fewer than 2 percent of Americans live on farms, agriculture might fairly be called our economy’s linchpin; we all have to eat. To its everlasting credit, our industrial farm system has created something our ancestors craved: a cheap, guaranteed food supply. But by any other quality measure, 21st century agriculture flunks. With the current federal farm bill expiring Sept. 30, Congress is poised, surprise surprise, to screw up its rewrite.

To understand what lawmakers should do, you first must know all the bad the current policy does.

To understand what lawmakers should do, you first must know all the bad the current policy does. It squanders taxpayers’ money, subsidizing the production primarily of five commodities (soybeans, cotton, corn, wheat and rice) grown largely by corporate and well-off farmers. Those five include essential ingredients in the junk foods making us fat. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates we’d avoid up to 127,000 heart disease deaths annually if Americans ate the USDA’s recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables — and those juicy strawberries, tangy blueberries, and succulent tomatoes you’ve savored this summer generally aren’t subsidized.

Current ag policy also poisons the environment. (Two examples: “The world’s largest ocean dead zone — an area the size of New Jersey devoid of aquatic life” — is a Gulf of Mexico stretch killed by agricultural runoff, a Yale magazine reports. And industrial livestock farming vomits greenhouse gases.) Between pesticides and the antibiotics used on livestock so promiscuously that diseases are becoming resistant to them, we may be poisoning ourselves. Congressional climate change deniers, meanwhile, are blocking action to address a potential “Coming Food Crisis” due to broiling temperatures. Finally, factory-farmed animals endure what can fairly be called torture.

Against this backdrop, Congress is pondering “reform” ideas that could fertilize all of Texas. House Republicans and Senate Democrats propose varying cuts to SNAP (food stamps). SNAP comprises the bulk of farm bill spending but helps the needy and is less fraud-riddled than farm supports. Another legislative legerdemain would delete direct crop subsidies, then funnel much of the savings to the same undeserving growers by boosting subsidies for their premiums under the government-supported crop insurance program.

Given the farm lobby’s clout, any good reform doubtless will be gradual. (Bill Clinton signed a phase-out of farm subsidies in 1996, only to sit back as a craven Congress did an end-run.) Economies of scale have been promoting Big Agriculture over idyllic family farms since the Gilded Age. Reform, it should be noted, doesn’t mean kamikaze attempt to produce everything locally, but rather shifting support to regionally produced food that’s healthier, environmentally benign, humane, and doesn’t pad rich people’s wallets.

A good farm bill would begin with a process farmers know well: pruning. We’d phase out direct subsidies, and trim insurance subsidies to wealthy farms and insurance companies (yes, you’re bankrolling them, too). The tens of billions saved would not only dwarf the proposed SNAP cuts, according to New York Times food guru Mark Bittman; they would be more than enough money for better uses.