20/04/2021

(AU ABC) For These Torres Strait Islanders, Climate Change Is Already Here — And They're Urging The Government To Do More

ABC 7.30 - Andy Park | Alex McDonald | Jenny Ky

Kabay Tamu says he is terrified of being forced to leave his island home in the Torres Strait. (ABC News)
For generations, Indigenous Australians have thrived on the islands in the Torres Strait – but rising sea levels, more extreme weather and coastal erosion are devouring some of the 17 inhabited islands in the region and threatening their way of life. 

Scientific modelling suggests that some of the low-lying islands could become uninhabitable within decades if global temperatures keep rising at the current rate.

"If this happens, we'll be climate change refugees in our own country," Torres Strait Islander Kabay Tamu told 7.30.

"It's going to be so traumatising.
"Our ancestors, our forefathers were buried here. Just thinking about it just sometimes brings tears to my eyes.
"It's really scary to think about that."

In the east of the Torres Strait, Yessie Mosby says climate change has made his island home an increasingly desolate place.

Yessie Mosby has seen the effects of climate change on his island home. (ABC News: Alex McDonald)

Fresh water from a well that once sustained generations of Torres Strait Islanders has now turned to salt water and parts of the reef around the island that were once abundant with shellfish are now filled with sand.

"The reef outside, it looks like a desert," Mr Mosby said.

Masig Island, situated in the eastern area of the central island group in the Torres Strait. (ABC News)

"Our ancestors survived off drinking fresh water along the wells they dug out through this island.

"Most of the wells are near the shorelines now — they used to be inland.

"All the water [has] now become brackish. It used to be drinkable — [it's] not drinkable anymore."

'Our human rights are being violated'

Boigu Island priest Stanley Marama is one of eight Torres Strait Islanders who accuse the Australian Government of failing to address the climate impacts that threaten their homes and culture.

They've taken their case to the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva.

Stanley Marama says the Australian government should be doing more to help the Torres Strait deal with the impacts of climate change. (ABC News: Alex McDonald)

"[The] Government should help us right now — not tomorrow, not next year," Mr Marama told 7.30.
"We believe that our human rights are being violated because of the impacts and the effects of climate change," Kabay Tamu said. 
In a statement to 7.30, Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt said the Morrison Government is "confident its climate change policies are consistent with international human rights obligations" and are "committed to providing infrastructure supports to Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal people in the Torres Strait."
"Geographic circumstances heighten the Torres Strait region's vulnerability to several climate change threats … the government is aware of the risks and is helping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities build their resilience and prepare for the impacts of climate change."
What the scientific modelling shows
How much the world warms in coming decades could determine whether the cultural traditions of the Torres Strait survive.

The average global temperature has already increased by 1.1 degrees and will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next 20 years if it continues on the current trajectory.

For the residents in the Torres Strait, time is running out.

Scientific modelling suggests the sea level there could rise about 80 centimetres by the end of this century, which would mean the kinds of devastating weather events that normally occur once every 100 years could hit low-lying islands like Boigu every few days.

"Probably in the last 10 years, I've seen about 20 metres of land being washed away," Mr Tamu told 7.30.
How much the world warms in coming decades could determine whether the cultural traditions of the Torres Strait survive. (ABC News: Alex McDonald)

In 2019, this group of Torres Strait Islanders asked Prime Minister Scott Morrison to come and see the impacts of climate change on the Torres Strait for himself — but the PM declined the invitation.

"It's pretty hard to see weather patterns change in Canberra," he said.

Communities located on low-lying islands are particularly vulnerable to increasingly intense storm tides caused by more extreme weather. (ABC News: ABC News)

Heather Zichal was a Climate Adviser during the Obama administration and she says meaningful action on the climate crisis needs to begin now.

"We have so much work to do," Ms Zichal said.
"Every single day that we aren't moving in the right direction, it's just going to make the problems and the challenges that much harder [to solve] down the road."
Locals determined to stay put

Masig Island resident Hilda Mosby hopes that building higher seawalls will protect the island — at least in the short term.

As they wait for construction to start on Masig Island, locals struggle to keep the rising sea from inundating the community.

A new seawall is currently being built on Boigu Island. (ABC News: Alex McDonald)
"We're doing everything we can to stay where we are," she said.

But London-based environmental lawyer Sophie Marjanac, who is working on the United Nations case, says Australian authorities need to plan for the worst — which means preparing to relocate some low-lying island communities.

"Our clients' islands are between three and 10 metres above sea level, so they're particularly vulnerable to the impacts of sea level rise," she told 7.30.

Environmental lawyer Sophie Marjanac is working on the United Nations case. (ABC News)
"Unfortunately, the science tells us that in the coming decades, some of these island communities will become uninhabitable.

"Planning for that really needs to begin now."

Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said further climate impacts were now unavoidable in the Torres Strait.

"But we can help those communities prepare as best as possible," she said.

Warraber Islet in the Torres Strait. (ABC News)

The scientific consensus suggests the world has about a decade to prevent some of the worst impacts of climate change from occurring — and many of the island communities in the Torres Strait hope their homes will be spared.

"I want us to live here for as long as we can," Mr Tamu said.
"I want my children, my grandchildren to live here and to experience the life that we experienced growing up."
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(AU SMH) Climate Change A Security Threat In Australia, Says Intelligence Expert

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

Australia should address climate change as a national security threat at the Earth Day climate summit hosted by US President Joe Biden, according to a former director of the Australian Department of Defence.

Cheryl Durrant, a specialist in intelligence analysis and scenario planning during her military career who is now an academic and councillor with the Climate Council, said Mr Biden had raised the significance of climate change as a security threat in his invitation to world leaders.

A man tries to access his house in a flooded neighbourhood of Jakarta in January, when 17 people were killed. Credit: Getty
She said Australia was falling behind other nations in integrating climate policy with national security. The two major security threats facing the world at present were global war and climate change, said Professor Durrant.

“The unfortunate double-whammy with climate change is that it makes global war more likely, so it is a bit of a no-brainer that it is the most pressing problem to tackle,” the former director of preparedness and mobilisation at the Defence Department said.

China's power game puts the pressure on Australian coal
Professor Durrant said climate change presented difficulties to defence planners because it was unlike other threats they have prepared for.

“The whole defence apparatus is set up around bad guys and good guys, it really hasn’t advanced much beyond who has the bigger club … and that kind of thinking does not solve a problem like climate change,” she said.

“You can’t bomb climate change, you can’t fight it. If you were to declare war on the worst per capita emitter you would be declaring war on Australia. If you were to declare war on the biggest historical emitter you would be fighting America. If you’re fighting the biggest current emitter you’d be declaring war on China.”

She said many of Australia’s allies were now considering climate change from a policy perspective that integrated defence and security, as well as agriculture.

A spokesman for Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said achieving Paris goals would require co-ordinated global action, “including from the top three largest emitters: China, the US and the European Union, which collectively account for more than half of global emissions”.

In his executive order announcing the April 22-23 summit, Mr Biden instructed his administration to produce integrated reports on climate impacts in foreign policy, national security, economics and defence, Professor Durrant noted.

He also announced the creation of a climate taskforce to include 13 cabinet members and a range of department heads.

By contrast, last year’s Australian Defence strategic update was developed in isolation from other agencies and mentioned climate change once.

Call for pantomime of coal politics to end in Upper Hunter
The potential security threats presented by climate change in Australia’s region were particularly significant, Professor Durrant said.

Recent reports have highlighted the prospect of mass migration due to sea level rise and intense heat, as well as water and food insecurity.

She said Australia had to have an “honest conversation” about whether it wanted to make a big investment in new defence technologies – such as missiles – in a destabilised region, or a big investment in renewable energy technologies that could help stabilise the region.

The concerns echo those raised in a new report by Dr Robert Glasser, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Climate and Security Policy Centre.

According to that report, sea level rise in this region is happening four times faster than the global average, and it has the largest coastal population in the world affected by it.

In Indonesia alone, 60 per cent of the population lives in coastal areas.

Dr Glasser said as the report was published that the risk of multiple climate-driven crises happening simultaneously in the region was growing and suggested we were “on the cusp of an overlooked, unprecedented and rapidly advancing regional crisis”.

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(AU The Australian) Labor Drops Hostility To Coal

The Australian - 

Madeleine King says Labor is ‘absolutely not supportive one bit’ of a push by Malcolm Turnbull for a moratorium on new coalmines. Picture: Sean Davey

Opposition resources spokeswoman Madeleine King has said Labor will not stand in the way of new mines and believes Australia will export coal beyond 2050, as the party moves to recast itself as a middle-ground option in the climate change wars.

Ms King, a West Australian MP who took over the resources portfolio in January, said she is up for the challenge of taking on the perception in Western Australia and Queensland that federal Labor is not supportive of the resources industry.

When asked whether Labor supported the coal sector, Ms King said “you bet it does,” and stressed her belief that Australia would continue to export the ­resource past 2050.

“It is a major export. It is in our top three in any given time at the moment,” Ms King told The Australian.

“For so long as international markets want to buy Australian coal, which is high quality, then they will be able to.”

Ms King said Labor was “absolutely not supportive one bit” of a push by Malcolm Turnbull for a moratorium on new coalmines, while adding there would also be “huge opportunities” for mining companies as the growth of low-emissions technologies increased demand for lithium, copper and nickel.

She called for a more “mat­ure” discussion on climate change from both sides of the debate in which green activists recognised that coal and gas would be part of the nation’s economy for many years to come.

“It is about having a more ­mature conversation and explaining exactly what this will involve,” she said.

“We all want a renewable ­energy future but it will not, cannot, happen overnight.

“We need to explain that … (and) junk these climate wars.

“Some arguments have been turned into a sort of a zero-sum game and it all has to be action immediately.

“And action is urgent. I think that it’s right to say we must act, but you cannot shut down ­people’s lives either and shut down industries overnight. And we shouldn’t want to do it.”

Ms King, who supports ­Anthony Albanese’s commitment of net-zero emissions by 2050, said she believed Australia would be exporting both thermal and metallurgical coal in the second half of the century.

“I think we go beyond the ­middle of the century, I really do,” Ms King said.

“I aspire to net-zero emissions by 2050 but not every country is going to make it.”

Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese and Shadow Resources Minister Madeleine King.

She said the coal exports were “still growing” and any declines in the sector were a “fair way off”.

“The demand will remain for some time and we will continue to supply that demand,” Ms King said. “As an export trading nation, we are subject to the vagaries of the international market that decides when that decline happens.

“I think (reduction in coal demand) is a fair way off yet. And I think it will be a slow gradual decline in demand as each (nation) that is committed to net-zero emissions figures out how it is going to make its energy mix work to get to that point.”

Ms King’s vocal support of the resources sector comes as the ­Opposition Leader moves to recast Labor as a centre-ground ­option that will take strong action on ­climate change but also support traditional industries.

At the ALP’s national conference last month, Labor made commitments to give tax breaks to electric cars but also inserted supportive references to the coal and gas sectors in its policy platform.

Former resources spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon has led the charge for the party to be more forthright in its support of the sector after the Adani and climate change ­issues savaged Bill Shorten’s support at the last election in Queensland, the NSW Hunter Valley and Western Australia.

While Labor has been successful at a state level in WA and Queensland in the past decade, its primary vote in the resource states has barely lifted above 30 per cent since Julia Gillard contested the 2010 election.

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