Wanted - Homes For Small Island People

[babylonsister]

Wanted - Homes For Small Island People
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - A rapidly warming planet may soon create a new class of refugees — those fleeing climate change in their homelands.


Tuvalu is showing signs of such a dire prospect. The Pacific island nation of some 12,000 people has already appealed to the governments of Australia and New Zealand to open their doors for its citizens to find a new home, states a background note by the secretariat of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The appeal stems from the Polynesian island “witnessing the salinisation of agricultural land and vanishing beaches due to sea-level rise,” adds the note. The Tuvaluan government wants to find new homes “for at least 3,000 people, and possibly its whole population, within the next few years”.

So far, the New Zealand government has been receptive, says Ian Fry, international environmental officer in Tuvalu’s ministry of natural resources and lands. “The New Zealand government has approved a limited intake of about 17 people a year. The Australian government has rejected the appeal.”

But Tuvalu hopes to make another appeal to Canberra later this year, Fry said in an interview. “Climate change has become a security issue for us; the security of an entire nation is being threatened by global warming. Tuvalu may be uninhabitable in 30 years if there is no global action to stop the sea-level rising.”

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/04/8092/

[tularetom]

1. Are they small people who live on islands?

Or regular size people who live on small islands?

Seriously it appears they may be in a world of crap. And probably those who refuse to take them in are the same people who have steadfastly denied the existence of man made climate change.

[XemaSab]

2. The depressing part isn't just the relocation

If Australia takes a handful of people and New Zealand takes another handful and Malaysia takes some people and so forth... their culture, their nation, is going to TOTALLY vanish. Their people are going to be scattered to the four winds and in a few decades it'll be like they were never even there.

There's only 12,000 people in the whole country. Would it really be such a big deal for a larger country like Australia to just accept the whole nation? :shrug:

[NNadir]

3. They can all move to Utsira in Norway.

Utsira has ten wind powered hydrogen homes, worth brazillions of dollars.

Oh wait...

...the funding is about to run out.

I guess they'll have to go somewhere else.