Sinking Without Trace: Australia’s Climate Change Victims
Like Kiribati and Tuvalu, the islands of the Torres Strait are slowly being submerged. But unlike their Pacific neighbours, the plight of their inhabitants is being overlooked.
Ron and Maria Passi, who operate Murray Island’s only taxi, were out driving the night the king tide struck. Neighbours flagged them down, asking for help, and so it was not until some time later that they saw their own grandchildren standing in the road. “They were shouting ‘Granddad, stop the car, the water is coming in the house’,” says Ron. “I just slammed on the brakes.”
The couple’s son, Sonny, was outside his fibro shack with his five children, watching the monster surf, lashed by north-west winds, rise ever higher. In the commotion, everyone had forgotten that Sedoi, the baby, was still inside. They heard her crying and found her in her cot, covered in sand. Water had surged in after a wave picked up a big wooden pallet and flung it through the front wall.
No one on Murray had ever seen such a high tide before. Other islands in the Torres Strait, which lies between the far north-eastern tip of the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea, have witnessed similar scenes in recent years. Houses, roads and graveyards have been flooded, and the locals believe they know the reason: climate change.
The low-lying islands that dot the sparkling waters of this region are facing similar challenges to South Pacific nations such as Kiribati and Tuvalu. But while the plight of those countries is well known and is regularly discussed in the international arena, few people outside Australia have even heard of the Torres Strait. Even Australians would have difficulty locating it on the map, and the remote islands - accessible only by light plane - receive few visitors.
Donna Green is one exception. A scientist at the University of New South Wales, English-born Dr Green is educating the islanders about the possible impacts of climate change and ways in which they can adapt. She embarked on the project after discovering that no one else was doing it. In fact, although the Torres Strait is considered the most vulnerable area of Australia, it is barely on the radar, either as a subject of scientific research or a focus of government policy.
There is no action plan for the region, and the newly formed Department of Climate Change was unable to cite any studies relating to these northerly islands. A search for the words “Torres Strait” on the department’s website yields no results.
Until the end of the last Ice Age, the strait was a land bridge connecting northern Australia with New Guinea. Some islands lie only a few miles off the Papua New Guinea coast, and the locals have more in common, ethnically, with the Melanesians of Papua New Guinea than the Aborigines of the Australian mainland. But they consider themselves proud Australians, and feel mildly aggrieved that it is not widely known that Australia has not one, but two indigenous races.
Six of the inhabited Torres islands are low-lying coral cays or swampy mud islands, with little or no elevation. As you fly over them, they look like smudges of green in a shimmering expanse of blue. Others are granite or volcanic, with some higher land. Even there, though, people are accustomed to living by the beach, their days revolving around fishing and collecting shells.
At dusk, walking along the water’s edge on Murray Island, the scene is idyllic. A local man is fishing for mackerel with his young son, as shoals of sardines dart along in the shallows. Children play in the sand, and reggae music drifts from one of the simple houses built along the beachfront, in the shade of coconut palms and almond trees.
But, after generations of living by the sea, many locals no longer feel comfortable. Maria Passi says: “At night I can’t sleep if the tide is high.” Her house was flooded by the king tide as well as her son’s. “There was water everywhere, and rubbish floating around, and coconuts under the bed,” says her husband Ron, as his wife adds: “When I saw how it looked, I just sat down and cried.”
Abnormally high tides are not the only phenomenon that the islanders have observed. The seasons are shifting, and the land is eroding. Birds’ migration patterns have altered, and the turtles and dugongs (sea cow) that are traditionally hunted for meat have grown scarce. People are no longer certain when to plant their crops: cassava, yams, sugarcane, bananas, sweet potato.
Murray, home to about 400 people, is the birthplace of indigenous land rights. It was five Murray Islanders, led by Eddie Mabo, who brought a legal action contesting the idea that Australia was uninhabited and belonged to no one when the British arrived. After a landmark High Court decision in 1992, Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders regained ownership of their traditional lands. But now the land for which Mr Mabo fought so long and hard is being swallowed by the sea.
Dr Green has organised workshops on the islands, offering information and practical advice. She has also held meetings with community elders in order to record their observations of weather patterns and environmental changes, in a project that blends traditional knowledge with Western science.
“There are very few formal records for this area, but the people who have lived here for generations have got these amazing banks of knowledge in their heads,” Dr Green says. “If we can understand the past, through people’s memories of extreme weather events, for instance, we can make projections for the future and work out what kind of action needs to be taken.
“Some of the people I’ve spoken to have already passed away. So that knowledge of theirs, which is like a library, is already being lost and it’s irreplaceable.”
Ron Day, a Murray Island elder and community leader, says he has witnessed disturbing changes. “We see the big trees near the beach, like the wongai trees, falling down. The seagrass that the dugongs eat, you used to find long patches of it, but not any more. The corals are dying, and the sand is getting swept away and exposing the rock.
“We were taught by our grandfathers and fathers to read the sky and forecast the weather. You see this cloud, you go to your garden and start planting. You see that cloud, it’s time to clear your land. But nowadays the weather is unpredictable.”
Others report that the rainy season is rainier, the dry season drier. And the marine life is behaving oddly. Julie Zaro, administration officer at the school on Murray, says: “Normally, at this time of year, you just throw out a line and get a mullet. But I sat there all weekend and didn’t see one fish. When it’s turtle time [the mating season], you usually see hundreds of them up on the beach, laying their eggs. But this year I saw only five or six.”
The people of this area - already socially and economically marginalised - face an uncertain future. Yet they barely figure in the Australian climate change debate, which has largely focused on the prolonged drought and its impact on farmers. About 7,000 people live on the islands, 18 of which are inhabited. Some want an evacuation and relocation plan; others are determined to stay put. They have a visceral connection with their land, and fear that their identity and culture will be extinguished if they are dispersed.
In the absence of any significant outside assistance, individuals are taking the initiative. On Murray, some locals have built makeshift fortifications against the waves, using fallen tree trunks, beach debris, rubber tyres and concrete blocks.
Mr Day is encouraging the islanders to move to higher ground. “We’re sea people, and the sea is in our blood,” he says. “But living on a small island surrounded by ocean, it’s very dangerous. We have to face facts: the water is rising.”
One of his fellow islanders, Sarie Tabo, is considering relocating. “But it would be very hard for me, because I fish every morning and every afternoon,” he says. “I wake up and I go to sleep with the sound of the waves. Up on the hill, it would be a whole different way of life.”
At least he has that option. On islands such as Saibai, there is no high land to move to. The islanders are squeezed on to a narrow strip of ground, between the encroaching ocean and the encroaching swamp. They have raised their houses, and sandbagged their families’ burial plots. The sea wall gets washed away during floods.
Father Ezra Waigana, priest of St Matthias Church on Saibai, says: “We were told there’s an iceberg melting and the level of the sea is going up. We don’t know how we will survive. Our island is only flat, and the water seems to be taking all the land.”
There was an exodus from Saibai after a major flood in 1948 but elders of Mr Waigana’s clan decided to stay on, in the place where their ancestors are buried. Their descendants feel it would be disrespectful to move - and some people cite God’s promise to Noah never again to flood the Earth.
Politicians from Canberra and Queensland occasionally fly into the islands and fly out. The locals call them seagulls. Asked whether the government is doing enough to help, Mr Day replies: “Most of the time they play deaf.” The islanders, he says, “need to make ourselves known to people in the global village”.
Dr Green says: “It’s been said to me by some islanders that they’re very happy that the Australian government is investing in the Pacific, to help their brothers and sisters deal with the impact of climate change. But they wonder why the government is not more strongly investing in similar communities in Australia, and they feel a bit overlooked.
“This is an area with few resources, and limited capacity to adapt, and it does seem a little forgotten at the moment. But these problems are not in Australia’s backyard. They are right in the front room.”
© 2008 The Independent
Paradise lost by the sounds of things. You could almost smell the warm sea air as you walked down the beach.
You can point your finger all you want, I feel it is to late. Bush and the oil companies have beat mother earth, I wonder what planet they are going to move to next?
Until this sort of story is written about wealthy people along the US coastlines, nobody will listen.
Hollow point - our planet will continue to do what it does with or without us. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be coming faster and faster.
I was just taking a vacation in my mind to a beach I know that my kids and grand kids maybe in their lives won’t ever see.
Rich people will move simple as that. Not hard to look at the worst case scenario to get a ball park idea where the new coast will be in 50 or 100 years.
Yes it will continue, it is if we will be able to on the level we do now and I say no.
Funny Canadian show on CBC show a few weeks showed what would happen if all the HUMANS on the planet died. The place sure looked nice in a few hundred years.
Again the story like this is NOT US based. Why is the American media afraid of the truth
Houseboats._______ it’s the only way to go.
Kem: good one
I was thinking of putting my money into trailers with the housing problem as all the home owners have to go back to their trailers. Houseboats maybe an investment to. Put a huge solar panel in the roof to power the fridge and electric outboard. Going to watch Water World with that Kevin guy in it and get some tips as to what Florida will look like in 50 years.
Warm water expands. Sea levels rise.
Oxygen depleted dead zones appearing on continental shelves. Acidification intensifying.
Permafrost melting escaping methane from millions of years ago.
Artic and Greenland melting ice will stop the North Atlantic current releasing methane hydrates on the ocean floor.
Heat moves the wind. The intensity of cyclones and tornadoes more frequent.
Buckle up.
We’ve begun.
There was a column in paper the other day by (I guess conservative) Deroy Murdock. Well, don’t ya know it? Temperatures are falling precipitously and so and so from AccuWeather is now worried about an ice age!
Time to retire to Cape May and watch the water rise.
Every port facility on Earth is built at the current sea level …….. think about it.
CIVIL BEHAVIOUR
‘the intensity of cyclones and tornadoes more frequent’……..yes, look what has just happened in mayanmar.
KEM PATRICK
remember your story about jacques cousteau saying he couldn’t film anything under water because of all the plastic bags etc. well, someone on c.d. recommended a book: ‘the world without us’ by alan weisman. i’ve now got that book and i’m half way through. the chapter about plastics in the sea is devastatingly frightening. it goes all the way down to the bottom of the food chain…………and no-one knows how long (or IF) it will take for it to disappear. build your houseboat out of plastic and you’ll blend in better.
Cape May, NJ is at zero (0) feet elevation according to NOAA weather. The tide will rise swiftly on that land and much will be lost. That’s only 45 miles from here and I reckon at sixteen (16) feet the tide is coming soon enough. Pity for the grandkids…
civil b-Thanks for that line up. Those very same markers have been tipping my own boat.
quousque-Thank you for that thought. That is something……
Hi there COCO, I feared you had been captured also, since Namaste, Nspire and Vaudree had suddenly been absent for the past week and Namast’s posts were almost all deleted clear back to April 1st. Sure glad to see you are still kicking.
Yeah, Jacques Costeau talked, wrote and gave speeches about the plastic in the oceans way back in 1960 and he warned us and few if any heeded his cries. It was that way when we went out on the Calypso with his family. You ever get a chance, read his book “The Ocean World”. It’s fantastic and very well illustrated, with hundreds of sea-life pictures he did take. A wonderful book.
Hi~Hollow Point~. There’s a fair chance we won’t be here in fifty years to dive down beneath the waves and take pictures of Miami or Disney World if the author of this article I’ll post is correct. I fear his words are omnious if we don’t start doing some very serious cleaning up. It takes two minutes to read this.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
At the same time these islands are disappearing, islands in the US Aleutian chain are also eroding into the sea.
But because they are an ‘invisible’ ethnic minority (Inuit), their plight is also being ignored by the Alaskan state government.
Those who have stated that this story will only be acknowledged when the wealthy are inconvenienced are correct.
Imagine the howls of outrage when Venice, Italy is finally claimed by the sea. Or London’s famed Thames Flood Barrier is over-topped during a North Sea storm surge, and central London is irrecoverably flooded.
It’s gonna happen a lot sooner, and with more violence than we think. Imagine ‘Katrina’ on PCP and steroids…
the earth has always been changing (warming/cooling - not to dispute human responsibility for/impact upon all of the ecosystems of earth). homo sapiens adapt. a significant percentage of the world’s human population lives w/in 100 miles of the sea. the impacts of rising tides will impact people globally. but as a multi cultural humanistic global society, we could sustain the lifeboat by attempting to restore habitat while intentionally decreasing population and adopting a more ’simplistic-minimalist’ lifestyle.
if we lived in a humane world, UN specialist (dutch engineers, US army corp etc..) would be looking for solutions. instead we’ll watch the destruction on CNN in a few years, and gasp… oh my god/goddess!!
war is stupid….
war is stupid……….
———————————————
an amazing article about how replanting 5000 acres of rainforest has immediate impacts that are noticeable for the people and the ecosystem. reforestation in 10 years.
Rainforest seeds revive lost paradise. Endangered wildlife returns to tropical wasteland as conservationists work a natural ‘miracle’
Juliette Jowit, environment editor, The Observer - Sunday May 4 2008.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/04/conservation.wildlife
…peace…
The program about the world after people has shown in the US on National Geographic Channel, or maybe it was Discovery. Yep, the planet will be fine without us. All this, “Save the planet” nonsense should be “Save your as##s”. Maybe if people could see it in that way we’d be more prone to act. It is not altruistic, it is purely self interest.
Kem
Been a certified scuba diver for years. When I take my dive boat out to the same area year after year I can see first hand what is happeneing. All the way from marine life, coral, pollution to the water temps. Temps are something a diver has to take into account to judge the safe bottom time as temps affects dive times. I fear it is to late as we would have to stop now and are years away from even looking at the problem in America. Thanks for the site, saved it for later reading tonight.
After having a “real winter” here in northern Minnesota, after several mild years I was amazed at sign in town. The sign along the highway belongs to the grocery store, gas station, and bank. It always advertises the gas price but below that it says, Bring Back Global Warming. If this is some kind of joke, I don’t get it.
quousque ,
That’s good, for if climate change works out with the need to relocate these sea ports, then maybe it’ll get the US govt to back off of war. That’s wishful dreaming though; very.
Nanoo ,
What kept you from posting a fourth, fifth, … duplicate of your original post, as if it was not enough to say what it says.
Hi ~Hollow Point~, Thanks for the excellent points and information. Yes it is far worse then almost 100% realize. And how to educate people?
This is a water world and we are destroying the water and therefore the world and time is running out. And a thread like this gets very little attention and within two days is buried in the archives.
I would like to see Common Dreams put a good article about global warming at the top of the headlines and leave it there for ten days or more. There is absolutely nothing on this water world of more importance.
Yep ~NANOO~, most don’t understand that climate change and global warming are two seperate issues. Then we have our ignorant Rush Limbaugh types confusing everyone they can about the problem.
I thought some might find this link interesting. I haven’t seen any images of what happened in Burma, but this: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18019
Cyclone Nargis Floods Myanmar (Burma)
“…Flood water can be difficult to see in photo-like satellite images, particularly when the water is muddy. This pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite use a combination of visible and infrared light to make floodwaters obvious. Water is blue or nearly black, vegetation is bright green, bare ground is tan, and clouds are white or light blue…”
Thank you for that link ~GREENSPARK~. No wonder over 20,000 deaths so far and over 40,000 missing. And we are sending a whole three million dollars in aid.
Hi, Kem– You’re welcome. Yeah… The toll is going to be far higher… Those people were prisoners (as we all are, it’s just obvious there now), just like new orleans… And three million, or three-hundred million, there’s not enough money in the world that can fix this. This Cyclone was a hurricane, wasn’t it?…..
Kem
well the water is getting warmer from the great lakes to the Caribbean. At times I don’t even have to push ice out of the way to go diving on a wreck in January. Plus the great lakes water levels are way down. Ship wrecks I have dove on are under less water by as much as 7 feet. When you know when you are sitting beside some wreck and your dive computer says you are at 103 feet and the wreck should be at 110 feet something is wrong. You even look at your dive buddy computer read out and it is the same.
This is off topic but so much water is being sucked out of the Great Lakes to flush toilets all over America.
PS there is no treasure down there that I have found but old bottles and the odd human bones.
Kem
It maybe a good idea to put a story on for a while but I feel many would just stop looking at it and move on. There is a problem out there but as long as the media and Gov and business have control we will never know how bad it is. America is in very bad shape.
Any time I am in Florida it smells like a toilet is that just me or am I right?
It is just like this story, gone by tomorrow
Hi ~Hollow Point~ Lake Mead will be dry in ten years, the Colorado river will be a trickle or a dry wash. Our two mountain streams dried up this year. The largest lake in Africa is already more than half it’s size and depth and there are few fish. Lakes in the Arctic which have been solidly frozen over for the past five million years are now ice free and spewing out methane gas by the mega-ton.
We do have a few serious problems and yet we have a few come here to this site and blog comments that it’s not really a problem. __ Strange, one doesn’t have to be a scientist to see with their own eyes what’s happening. Denyers piss me off.
Yes Greenspark, hurricanes are named cyclones in Asia or typhoons in the China sea. They are all the same, rotating winds with a high velocity and a low barometric pressure. I’ve sat through two of them over there but was on high ground, it was scary for sure. That three million bucks is a world wide insult, especilly when we spend a bilion every five days to occupy Iraq.
I did some more, just planted those 200 trees I ordered, hope it helps, now up to over 2000 trees I have planted on my farm.
I’d sure like to see a really good global warming article be a ten day or more feature article and see how many comments are posted. Post it with a banner headline at the top and leave it there.
Title it, __”Global Warming ~~ Fact or Fiction”.
There were two articles in April about 9-11 and they had a combined total of over 1,200 comments. Of course that wasn’t an enviromental issue and a good number of comments were posted by about ten who argued the subject. Anyway, I wish Common Dreams would try it at least once. It is our most important issue.
I haven’t been to Florida for years Hollow Point, but any time water tables are low and there are, or have been a lot of septic tanks or cess pools, it can smell like shit. Then too ocean shore wetlands often stink until you get used to the smell, it would also depend on how polluted the ocean water is I suppose and we know it’s horribly polluted almost every place.
My two brothers lived near Miami years ago and had a aircraft overhaul facility. They customized a PBY Catalina for Jacque Costeau. It was a beauty, painted green and white and he also named it Calypso. I helped test fly it, but only as a screaming back seat advisor.
They removed the flight engineers compartment from the mid wing root area and added another fuel tank there. Costeau’s son crashed and was killed in it one day. Bob tried to tell him he wasn’t ready for it but he wouldn’t listen. He was a swell guy, the whole family was. Costeau invented a lot of the diving gear you use. He was a genius actually.
Excellent ~Good Luck~. I cannot think af anything more rewarding, than to see a tree you have planted grow to maturity. You have 2,000 personal pleasures.
Kem
some are over 60 feet high and yes it feels great. I passed it on to my kids and every year it is them asking lets plant more trees. Next year I hope to do another 2 to 300.
911 will always be a hot issue, I have the un cut version of the towers falling off CBC that shows the mid tower blow out clearly. 24 hours later the CBC was forced the change it along with the person repoting. I also passed that on to as many as I can. Did I witness inside??