Tuvalu will always be a state, even if underwater, says PM
Tuvalu could be one of the first nations to sink beneath the sea as a result of climate change, but that doesn't mean its statehood is up for discussion, the tiny Pacific archipelago's prime minister said Thursday.
Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Kausea Natano said there had been "unnecessary" conversations in academic and diplomatic circles centered on the definition of a country under international law.
"Our sovereignty is not negotiable," Natano told AFP, adding that his country would be working with the international community to "bring a close to these distractions."
Tuvalu's population of 11,000 is spread across nine islands that rise less than five meters above sea level, underscoring the extraordinary challenges it faces from sea-level rise.
Two of the atolls represented on its flag of 11 stars have already disappeared, and even the higher lying areas could become uninhabitable by 2100 as a result of salt contaminating its land and water supply.
The 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States holds that a state consists of a defined territory, a permanent population, a government and the capacity to interact with other states.
If the territory is swallowed up, or no one can live on what is left of it, then at least one of the criteria is no longer met.
But while Tuvalu's land mass accounts for just 26 square kilometers (10 square miles)—around the size of seven Central Parks—its maritime territory covers a vast 800,000 square kilometers.
The convention is ambiguous on the question of whether territory is wet or dry, and there is no precedent for revoking the status of a UN member state, leaving the matter fuzzy.
Land reclamation, and the metaverse
Tuvalu isn't taking an underwater future as a given, and—along with pleading with the world to end its addiction to fossil fuels—has begun work on a Coastal Adaptation Project that aims to reclaim around 3.8 kilometers of land from the ocean and raise land levels in the most vulnerable spots.
It has been financed with $36 million in international assistance channelled through the Green Climate Fund, and $2.9 million from Tuvalu's own government.
The situation is dire, says Natano. Around 40 percent of the capital Funafuti already gets submerged during periodic "king" tides that wash away root crops, including former island staples taro and cassava.
While he is pleased that the project's first phase is nearing completion, Natano said the scope is too small to help all of his people.
"We need more, faster action from whoever is in a position to support us, urgently," he said.
To this end, the country has been at the forefront of the major climate action calls: a global tax on fossil fuels, and the activation of a "loss and damages" fund—international climate jargon for climate compensation owed by rich polluting countries to the most impacted nations.
This fund was agreed to in principle at the last major climate talks in Egypt, but—like so many other vows from the rich world—has yet to be fulfilled.
"It's a matter of life and death—it's a matter of disappearing from the surface of this Earth," said Natano, urging countries to keep their promise.
Should the worst come to pass, Tuvalu has been moving its cultural heritage to the digital sphere, in what some have called a model for how "Nation-States 2.0" might work.
But what happens to Tuvalu will merely be a harbinger of what cities around the world threatened by sea-level rise will experience—from Miami to Manila, said Natano.
"More and more citizens of the world will have to relocate," he said. "Use us a model to preserve the entire world."
© 2023 AFP
EDGAR ALLAN POE
THE CITY IN THE SEA.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LO! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently —
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free —
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls —
Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls —
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of scultured ivy and stone flowers —
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine. [page 22:]
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye —
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass —
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea —
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave — there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrown aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide —
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow —
The hours are breathing faint and low —
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence. [[,]]
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
Notes:
In reading this poem, the modern mind tends immediately to think of Atlantis, the fabled paradise that has long usurped any recollection of other submerged cities. As has often been suggested, the more likely source for Poe was the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, both still visible beneath the Dead Sea. In his poem “Al Aaraaf,” Poe includes the following note: “There were, undoubtedly, more than two cities engluphed in the ‘dead sea.’ In the valley of Siddim were five — Adrah, Zeboin, Zoar, Sodom, and Gomorrah. Stephen, of Byzantium, mentions eight, and Strabo, thirteeen, (engulphed) — but the last is out of all reason. It is said, (Tacitus, Strabo, Josephus, Daniel, of St. Saba, Nau, Maundrell, Troilo, D’Arvieux) that, after an excessive drought, the vestiges of columns, walls, &c. are seen above the surface. At any season, such remains may be discoverd by looking down into the transparent lake, and at such distances as would argue the existence of many settlements in the space now usurped by the ‘Asphaltites.’ ”
[S:1 - RAOP, 1845 (fac, 1969)] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Poems - The City in the Sea (Text-05c)
Fri, September 22, 2023
By Daphne Psaledakis
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Island nations bearing the brunt of climate change this week confronted rich countries at the United Nations General Assembly, saying the failure by developed countries to act with urgency had put the islands' survival at risk.
"There are many amongst us, the small and marginalized islands of our globe, surrounded by rising seas and scorched by rising temperatures, who are beginning to question this annual parade of flowery speeches and public pretense of brotherhood, otherwise known as the U.N. annual General Assembly," Saint Lucia Prime Minister Philip Pierre told the gathering on Friday.
Several speakers at the week-long event quoted U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who in July cautioned that the era of global warming had ended and “the era of global boiling has arrived.”
A perceived lack of urgency by developed nations was a recurring theme. Speakers emphasized that a failure to sufficiently curb greenhouse gas emissions had contributed to rising sea levels, threatening island and low-lying nations.
"The problem is that those whose actions we most need may be so confident in their survival that they do not act early enough for us," Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said on Friday.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, countries aimed to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the threshold scientists say would head off the worst impacts of warming.
To meet that goal, scientists say the world needs to cut global emissions in half by 2030, and to net-zero by 2050.
"Unfortunately, the international community has not done nearly enough to get us on track to limiting the global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius," Wesley Simina, president of Micronesia, said in a speech on Thursday.
"One need only scan the news on any random day to see the evidence of the climate crisis in devastating effects around the world today," he said.
Marshall Islands President David Kabua called for the establishment of an international financing facility to assist small island and low-lying atoll nations facing natural disasters.
Kabua said countries attending the U.N. COP28 climate summit beginning in November must recognize that the world is failing to deliver on the Paris Agreement and agree on a roadmap to correct course, including the phase-out of fossil fuels.
"These challenges might be inconvenient for large economies - but I can assure the climate impact's already at our door," he told the General Assembly.
U.S. President Joe Biden will host a second summit with leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum at the White House on Monday, where climate will be on the agenda. The gathering is part of Washington's efforts to step up engagement with a region where the U.S. is in a battle for influence with China. (Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis at the United Nations and Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Editing by Don Durfee and Howard Goller)
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