Most Australians Oppose Adani Mine, Poll Shows, Amid National Protests

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Thousands of people gather at 40 locations across the country on Saturday as part of the Stop Adani Alliance

People form a sign at Nobby’s Beach in Newcastle as part of the Stop Adani protest. Photograph: Ryan Jago

New polling shows the majority of Australians oppose Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine going ahead, and an even bigger number are against Queensland allowing the company to receive a $1bn federal loan.
The polling, commissioned by the Stop Adani Alliance, was released on Saturday as thousands of people are expected to attend rallies at dozens of locations around the country, expressing their opposition to the project.
The ReachTel survey of almost 2,200 people across Australia found 55.6% of respondents opposed the mine going ahead. That was more than twice the number who supported the mine, with 18.4% of respondents saying they were “undecided”.

Support for Adani coalmine going ahead

Question: “Indian mining company Adani wants to build a new coal mine in Queensland, which it argues will create local employment opportunities, but concerns have been raised about the company’s corporate track record and the impact of the mine on the environment. Do you support or oppose the Adani coal mine going ahead?”
Guardian graphic | Source: ReachTEL

When told that the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, had made an election commitment not to spend public funds on Adani’s project, 65.8% of those polled said she should use her power to veto the possible $1bn loan the federal government might give the project through the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility (Naif).
That view was unanimous across voters of all persuasions – respondents who said they voted Liberal, National, Labor, Green, One Nation, Australian Conservatives, as well as those who were undecided, were all more likely to think Palaszczuk should veto the loan.

Should the Queensland government veto any $1bn federal loan to Adani?

Question: “The Queensland Premier made an election commitment that her Labor government would not spend public funds on Adani’s private rail line for their coal mine. Should the Queensland government keep its promise and use the power is has to veto the federal government loan of $1 billion to Adani for the rail line?”
Guardian graphic | Source: ReachTEL

Support for the mine to go ahead was extremely divided among backers of different political parties.
Australian Conservative voters were the only group with clear support for the mine, with 57% saying they backed it.
Liberal voters were almost split down the middle – 39.3% backed the mine and 34.1% opposed it, while 25.7% were undecided.
A clear majority of most other voters opposed the mine proceeding – 69% of Labor, 58% of National and 90% of Greens voters. Among the One Nation voters, more opposed the mine going ahead (44.9%) than supported it (37.7%).
The polling follows earlier surveys showing similar numbers, including one commissioned by GetUp in January, finding that three-quarters of respondents believed a loan to Adani was not a good use of public money. And polling by The Australia Institute in May found 59% of Queensland voters were opposed to any state or federal assistance for the mine.
Federal Labor has had some divisions over the question of whether to support the mine and the Greens have sought to push them to say they will review any commonwealth funding for it.
The Greens are launching their Queensland state election campaign today, which will focus on opposition to the Adani mine, and place the heat on Queensland Labor for its strong support to the mine.

Protesters wearing masks depicting Malcolm Turnbull and Gautam Adani at Sydney’s Bondi beach. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Members of the Stop Adani Alliance – which comprises more than 30 environment groups – began to gather at 40 protests around the country on Saturday.
They plan to spell out “Stop Adani” in “human signs” at beaches and other prominent locations around the country.
“While the Queensland and federal governments remain staunch supporters of this dirty mine, new polling shows the Australian community is angry that $1bn of public money could be handed to Adani for a mine which will wreck the climate and the Reef,” said Blair Palese, chief executive of 350.org Australia.
“Voters are clear. They believe the Queensland government should stick to its promise and block the $1bn loan to billionaire Adani for his private rail line.”

Links

• Adani mine 'not a positive thing for Australia', Labor's Mark Butler says
• Details of royalty deal for mega mine are still being negotiated with Adani, says Queensland
• Adani mine loses majority support of traditional owner representatives
• Adani gives 'green light' to $16bn Carmichael coal mine
• Most Queensland voters oppose taxpayer support for Adani coalmine – poll
• Adani mine: Palaszczuk faces factional fight to seal new royalties deal
• Anti-Adani activists vow 'direct action' against mine contractor Downer
• Adani mine leases and national parks in doubt after native title court decision
• Most Australians oppose government's $1bn Adani loan for coal railway line

Australians Endured ‘Exceptional Heat’ During September

NEWS.com.au - Benedict Brook and AAP

IT’S not often you see brown on the weather map, but it’s not often you get weather like this either. The Bureau of Meteorology says it’s really not good.

New climate study warns of 50 degree days

IT WAS almost two weeks ago, but you may remember Friday September 22. Weather-wise it has now gone down in history.

The 22nd was the hottest-ever September day, with more than a fifth of the country setting new highs.
The mean maximum temperature on September 22 was 33.47C — more than six degrees warmer than the month’s average, the Bureau of Meteorology said in a special climate statement published on Thursday.

A map of climate anomalies on 22 September 2017. Areas coloured red or brown is at least 8C above the average temperature. Picture: Bureau of Meteorology special climate statement. Source:Supplied

It broke the previous record set on the last day of September in 1998 of 33.39C and was the warmest since records began in 1911.
The Bureau said the heat during September was “exceptional” and much of it was caused by a high-pressure system centred over New South Wales and the Tasman Sea that kept large parts of eastern and northern Australia mostly cloud free.
Low rainfall and parched soil led the sunny weather to rapidly heat the land surface and overlying air.

NSW on September 23 showing the maximum temperature difference from the long-term average. Picture: Bureau of Meteorology special climate statement maps. Source:Supplied

NSW and Queensland experienced their hottest September days on record the following week, while South Australia, Victoria and the Northern Territory each had days in their top 10 warmest for September.
“More than 20 per cent of Australia by area recorded its hottest September day on record during 22-29 September,” the Bureau said.
NSW as a whole experienced its hottest September day on record on September 23, with a mean maximum temperature of 35.81C — more than 1.5C above the previous mark and nearly 15C warmer than the long-term average.
The Bureau noted that spring has warmed by around one degree since 1910 across Australia, consistent with what’s been observed around the world. “Studies undertaken by the Bureau and other scientific institutions have shown that climate change has contributed to the severity and frequency of recent heat events, including spring warmth,” it said.

Links

• Prepare to sweat: 50C days are coming
• Where’s Australia’s rain gone?
• Charles urges climate ‘wake-up call’
• Australian cities to have 50C summer days by 2040, study says
• Australia's summer heat hints at worse to come 
• Aerosol study to look at great unknown in climate science 
• Thunderstorm asthma: 'You're talking an event equivalent to a terrorist attack' 
• 'The blob': how marine heatwaves are causing unprecedented climate chaos

A Lack Of Action On Climate Change Is Putting People's Lives At Risk

The Guardian - Dr Mark Monaghan*

In the 2014 Melbourne heatwave, 167 people died. Emergency departments can’t deal with this problem alone

‘What we also know from the heatwaves we have seen in Australia thus far is that we can expect a very significant impact on our public health system.’ Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images

A new study warning Australia’s major cities are likely to reach highs of 50C by 2040 – even if the world meets its target of limiting warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels – is yet more evidence that without immediate and urgent action we are facing a looming public health crisis during heatwaves and other extreme weather events.
The study follows recent unseasonable heat across New South Wales, with Sydney experiencing its hottest ever September day, as well as the doubling of record-breaking summer temperatures in Australia in the past 50 years. This new normal has hospital health professionals particularly bracing for the coming summer.
Public Australian emergency departments are tough places to both work and be a patient. They are hectic, often overwhelmed, not infrequently threatening environments that are emotionally demanding for everyone. And, with ever increasing demand and an ageing population, along with a politically-sensitive health budget, the emergency department is increasingly the public face of a stressed health system.
Every day, sometime around 11am, the ambulances roll in. This is when we see the presentation rate suddenly increase, commonly bringing a new patient every three to four minutes, a rate that will continue until 10-11pm every evening. Generally during this 11 to 12 hour period we see two-thirds of our presentations. This is the time that the department heaves.
During this period, on any given day, the resuscitation area will be full. A delirious elderly patient with septicaemia will be lying alongside someone with chest pain who may be next to a psychotic methamphetamine-intoxicated patient screaming abuse as they are restrained by security and clinical staff, while a full resuscitation of an out of hospital cardiac arrest or a major trauma takes place in a nearby bay.
Monitor alarms will be going off continuously, the sounds broken by an ambulance priority-one call coming through, while medical and nursing staff will be moving from one patient to the next as quickly as possible, trying to keep on top of the deteriorating patients around them. And soon enough ambulances will be banking up outside the front door as the department exceeds its capacity to deal with the influx, kept from being on the road responding to emergencies as they wait to offload their patients.
While all this is going on, the inpatient units are being pushed to discharge as many patients, as early as possible in the day, to make capacity for the admissions that will come, both as emergency and elective surgical patients. All of this has to happen, has to work to an optimal level to deal with the demand of any usual day in our public health system.

Are we going to take the health of our population and our ecosystem seriously ...?

Now let us add to this day three of a heatwave (defined as three or more days of high maximum temperatures). With climate change causing a gradual increase in average temperatures, we know that heatwaves are more frequent and of increasing severity.
What we also know from the heatwaves we have seen in Australia thus far is that we can expect a very significant impact on our public health system. Increases of up to 25% for ambulance emergency call outs; up to 60% increase in emergency department resuscitation cases, often in the elderly and vulnerable members of our society; an overall increase in presentations to our already overstretched emergency departments; and an increase in overall deaths ranging from 13% to 24%. In the 2014 Melbourne heatwave, that equated to 167 excess deaths.
One hundred and sixty seven deaths. If that had been a fire, or explosion, or heaven forbid a terrorist attack, it would be a national disaster that would be in the public eye for days. Yet it will happen reliably with every major heatwave event, and we barely bat an eyelid.
These issues are discussed in an article in the current edition of the Medical Journal of Australia, which I co-authored with former Australian of the Year, Professor Fiona Stanley, and public health physician, Dr Marion Carey.
And it is not just these direct consequences that are significant. There is always a huge demand on public hospital beds, many hospitals running at or beyond a level of occupancy that allows for efficient systems. What this means is that even without additional burdens such as heatwaves, it is a constant struggle to create capacity for those who need admission. Events such as heatwaves only exacerbate this pressure, resulting in reduced access for all patients, not just those affected by heat-related illness.
So, with the prospect of increasing extreme weather along with the so many other challenges of climate change we have some serious questions to address.
Are we going to take the health of our population and our ecosystem seriously and do everything we can to mitigate the inevitable increase in ambient temperature? How do we minimise the completely unacceptable mortality rates that we are already seeing, and what do we do to invest in our health systems to cope with what will be an ever increasing burden?
These are challenges that require immediate, mid and long-term solutions, challenges that we need to see taken seriously by the government of the day.

*Dr Mark Monaghan is an emergency physician and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia

Links

• Australian cities to have 50C summer days by 2040, study says
• A new shock doctrine: in a world of crisis, morality can still win
• Former weather bureau chief says agency debilitated by climate deniers' attacks 
• Global 'March for Science' protests call for action on climate change 
• Facts over feelings: Australians join global march for science 
• Australia's summer heat hints at worse to come 
• Aerosol study to look at great unknown in climate science 
• Thunderstorm asthma: 'You're talking an event equivalent to a terrorist attack' 
• Medical staff in dark about policies to mitigate health risks of climate change, study says 
• 'The blob': how marine heatwaves are causing unprecedented climate chaos 

Time To Shine: Solar Power Is Fastest-Growing Source Of New Energy

The Guardian - Adam Vaughan

Renewables accounted for two-thirds of new power added to world’s grids last year, says International Energy Agency

A rooftop covered with solar panels at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. The US is still the second fastest-growing market for renewables despite Donald Trump’s pledge to revive coal. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

Solar power was the fastest-growing source of new energy worldwide last year, outstripping the growth in all other forms of power generation for the first time and leading experts to hail a “new era”.
Renewable energy accounted for two-thirds of new power added to the world’s grids in 2016, the International Energy Agency said, but the group found solar was the technology that shone brightest.
New solar capacity even overtook the net growth in coal, previously the biggest new source of power generation. The shift was driven by falling prices and government policies, particularly in China, which accounted for almost half the solar panels installed.
The Paris-based IEA predicted that solar would dominate future growth, with global capacity in five years’ time expected to be greater than the current combined total power capacity of India and Japan.
Dr Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, said: “What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar photovoltaics [PV]. We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology up to 2022.”

The authority, which is funded by 28 member governments, admitted it had previously underestimated the speed at which green energy was growing.
The amount of renewable energy capacity forecast globally in 2022 has been revised upwards on last year’s forecast, driven by the IEA expecting a third more solar in China and India.

Wind turbines and solar panels in Yancheng, Jiangsu province of China. The China is the world’s fastest-growing market for renewables. Photograph: VCG via Getty Images

While China dominates the expansion of renewables, the US is still the second fastest-growing market despite Donald Trump’s pledge to revive coal and the uncertainties he has brought at a federal level.
Paolo Frankl, head of the renewable energy division at the IEA, said that solar and wind subsidies and other fundamentals meant the president’s impact would probably be limited.
However, that could change if there were reforms that retrospectively hit the subsidies or if the US International Trade Commission imposes tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels. “There is a risk, but at the moment our forecast remains strong,” said Frankl.
India is set for a solar boom over the next five years, as bottlenecks such as integrating solar farms with the grid are overcome. The country’s renewable energy capacity is forecast to double by 2022, overtaking the EU on growth.
The picture for the UK is a “mixed message,” said Frankl. The IEA has revised downward its forecast for the amount of green energy to be built in the UK between 2017 and 2022, with offshore windfarms expected to account for most of the growth.
Despite the recent opening of the UK’s first subsidy-free solar farm, the prospects for British solar are fairly gloomy: the amount of solar forecast to be installed by 2022 is a fifth of the amount installed over the last five years.
The report found that renewables are becoming increasingly comparable to fossil fuels on price, with wind and solar projects setting record low prices in government auctions.
“Renewables may well become even cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives [over the next five years]. However, be careful because this does not automatically mean they are competitive and investment will flow. That depends on the risk of investment and whether remuneration flows make a project bankable or not,” said Frankl.
The growth in renewable power will be twice as large as gas and coal combined over the next five years, the IEA said. While that will take renewables’ share of electricity generation from 24% last year to 30% in 2022, coal will still be the biggest source of power.
The increasing scale of wind and solar power, and their intermittent nature at a local level, means that integrating them with power grids has become critical, the IEA said. Countries will need to bring forward policies that make grids more flexible, such as batteries and managing demand at peak times, it suggested.
One energy expert said that the IEA report was, if anything, underestimating the speed of renewables’ growth and the impact of them becoming so cheap.
Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at Australia-based analysts IEEFA, said: “2016 was another record high year of renewable installs and unexpectedly large renewable energy cost deflation, again highlighting the IEA’s continued underestimation of both these two trends driving the increasingly global market transformation.”

Links

• This summer was greenest ever for energy, says National Grid
• Wind power is now cheaper than nuclear – the energy revolution is happening
• Greens propose new energy storage target to drive switch to renewables 
• 'A no-brainer': small businesses can be part of a renewables revolution too 
• World's first solar panel road opens in Normandy village

Trump Takes A First Step Toward Scrapping Obama’s Global Warming Policy

New York Times - Lisa Friedman

A power plant in Homer City, Pa. President Trump has vowed since the campaign to repeal the Clean Power Plan, which was designed to reduce emissions from the power sector. Credit Keith Srakocic/Associated Press 

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will repeal the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of President Obama’s effort to fight climate change, and will ask the public to recommend ways it could be replaced, according to an internal E.P.A. document.

The draft proposal represents the administration’s first substantive step toward rolling back the plan, which was designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, after months of presidential tweets and condemnations of Mr. Obama’s efforts to reduce climate-warming pollution.

But it also lays the groundwork for new, presumably weaker, regulations by asking for the public and industry to offer ideas for a replacement.

The E.P.A. document, “October 2017 Tiering List,” lays out upcoming policy issues of high priority for the agency’s office of air and radiation, which oversees air pollution policies.

“The agency is issuing a proposal to repeal the rule,” the document states. It says the agency will issue a formal notice of its intention to develop a new rule “similarly intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing fossil-fueled electric utility generating units and to solicit information for the agency to consider in developing such a rule.”

The document does not explain how the Environmental Protection Agency will justify to the courts the decision to eliminate the regulation. Several industry attorneys familiar with the agency’s plans said they expected Mr. Pruitt to argue that the Obama administration relied on an overly-broad reading of federal clean air laws in writing the Clean Power Plan.

President Trump has vowed since the campaign to “get rid” of the Obama-era environmental regulations. He has called the Clean Power Plan “stupid” and “job killing,” and in an executive order issued in March he directed Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, to dismantle the rules. Last month, Mr. Trump appeared to claim he had already done so, telling a crowd in Alabama, “Did you see what I did to that? Boom, gone.”

Killing the regulation also has been a high priority for Mr. Pruitt, who as attorney general of Oklahoma sued to overturn it in court.

But in recent weeks industry groups have pressed the Trump administration to fashion a new, narrower measure in its stead. Many have argued that creating such a replacement, rather than simply repealing the Clean Power Plan, is necessary to avoid lawsuits. Under a landmark agency determination known as the endangerment finding, the E.P.A. is required to regulate carbon emissions.

Mr. Pruitt has been under pressure from interest groups that deny the scientific consensus on climate change — that it is occurring and caused by human emissions — to overturn that determination. The E.P.A. document does not indicate Mr. Pruitt’s plans, but creating a new regulation implicitly accepts that the federal government has a role in addressing the reduction of carbon dioxide.

It remains unclear when the agency will formally repeal the rule. Liz Bowman, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, declined to comment on the document or plans for the rule.

The Clean Power Plan, which required states to cut greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants by 32 percent by 2030 relative to 2005 has been tied up in litigation. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had set an Oct. 7 deadline for the E.P.A. to show progress in its decision-making.

Brian Deese, who served as a senior adviser on climate change to Mr. Obama, said the E.P.A. was buying time. Asking the public for ideas, he said, is what an agency does when it is uncertain about how to proceed. Consideration of a new regulation could take months or even years, he said.

“They’re trying to walk this tightrope,” Mr. Deese said.

Links

• Trump Wants to Repeal Obama’s Climate Plan. The Next Fight: Its Replacement.
• U.S. Climate Change Policy: Made in California
• Can Hollywood Movies About Climate Change Make a Difference?
• As Seas Warm, Whales Face New Dangers

What Scientists Are Learning About The Impact Of An Acidifying Ocean

Oceans Deeply - Matthew O. Berger

The effects of ocean acidification on marine life have only become widely recognized in the past decade. Now researchers are rapidly expanding the scope of investigations into what falling pH means for ocean ecosystems.

Male and female spider crabs in the ocean off France. Ocean acidification weakens the ability of crabs and other marine animals to form protective shells. Bruno Guenard/Biosphoto

The ocean is becoming increasingly acidic as climate change accelerates and scientists are ramping up investigations into the impact on marine life and ecosystems. In just a few years, the young field of ocean acidification research has expanded rapidly – progressing from short-term experiments on single species to complex, long-term studies that encompass interactions across interdependent species.
“Like any discipline, it takes it time to mature, and now we’re seeing that maturing process,” said Shallin Busch, who studies ocean acidification at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.
As the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, the pH of seawater falls. The resulting increase in acidity hinders the ability of coral, crabs, oysters, clams and other marine animals to form shells and skeletons made of calcium carbonate. While the greenhouse gas effect from pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has been known for decades, it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that the impacts of ocean acidification became widely recognized. In fact, there is no mention of acidification in the first three reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued in 1990, 1995 and 2001. Ocean acidification did receive a brief mention in the 2007 report summarizing the then-current state of climate science, and finally was discussed at length in the latest edition released in 2014.
But about halfway through that brief dozen years of acidification research, a shift started taking place.
“The early studies were just a first step and often quite simple,” said Busch of ocean acidification research. “But you can’t jump into the deep end before you learn how to swim.”
That started to change about five or six years ago, according to Philip Munday, who researches acidification effects on coral reefs at Australia’s James Cook University. “The first studies were often single species tested against ocean acidification conditions, often quite extreme conditions over short periods of time,” he said. “Now people are working on co-occurring stresses in longer-term experiments.”
That includes studying how acidification could change how organisms across a community or ecosystem interact – in other words, how the impacts on one species affect those it eats, competes with or that eat it. It also means looking at how impacts could change over time, due to species migrating or adapting, either in the short term or across a number of generations and how such effects may vary within the same species or even with the same population.
Nine examples of this new generation of acidification research are included in the latest issue of the journal Biology Letters. One study, for example, found that the ability to adapt to pH changes differed in members of the same species of sea urchins based on location. Another discovered that a predatory cone snail was more active in waters with elevated carbon dioxide levels but was less successful at capturing prey, reducing predation on a conch species. Another highlights that an individual organism’s sex can affect its response to acidification.
Munday, who edited the series of papers, said one of the major takeaways is that researchers are increasingly studying the potential for species to adapt to ocean acidification and finding those adaptations can be quite complex.
He pointed to a study on oysters. Previous work had shown that oysters whose parents were exposed to acidification conditions do better in those conditions than those whose parents weren’t. But in a new study, researchers found that when they exposed the offspring to additional stressors – such as hotter water temperatures and higher salinity – those adaptive advantages decreased.
All the studies call for including often-overlooked factors such as sex, location or changes in predation rate in future studies. Otherwise, researchers warn, impacts will be increasingly difficult to predict as the ocean continues to acidify.
“It’s far too early to make any sort of generalities,” Munday said.
The latest paper from NOAA’s Busch also cautions against generalities. By building a database of species in Puget Sound and their sensitivity to changes in dissolved calcium carbonate, she found that summarizing species’ sensitivity by class or order rather than the specific family can result in overestimating their sensitivity.
She compared it to similarities between people in the same immediate family versus people who are distant cousins. “There would be a lot more variation among those people because they’re not super closely related,” she said. “But when people started summarizing data really early in the field, there wasn’t much data to pull from. So it was done at a class level.
“Now that we have many more studies and information to pull from, how we draw summaries of species response should be nuanced,” she added.
Acidification research is likely to get only more nuanced in the years ahead. From the broad initial projections of average, ocean-wide surface acidity, for instance, researchers have started to pinpoint local pH projections, local impacts and local adaptations.
“We know the ocean is changing in a number of ways,” said Busch. “So just studying one of those factors without looking at the other changes in what’s going on in the ocean is not going to yield useful results.”
 
Links

• Another Threat to the Ocean: Deoxygenation
• Scientists: Big Marine Reserves Fight Climate Change, Save the Ocean
• How a Carbon Tax Can Build Blue Economies in Pacific Island Nations
• ‘Fingerprinting’ the Ocean to Predict Devastating Sea Level Rise

How International Law Could Help Small Islands Tackle Climate Change

Oceans Deeply - Ian Evans

Small island states face increasing threats from climate change – from rising sea levels to the loss of coral reefs. University of Hawaii law professor Maxine Burkett discusses legal strategies that could help them secure compensation for those impacts.

Many island communities have lived on their island for millennia. Now, a changing climate and ocean may mean that future generations won’t grow up there. Photo by Kees van der Geest, Environmental Law Program, University of Hawaii, courtesy of of Maxine Burkett

Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria. But for all of the damage, the island is at least a territory of one of the world’s richest and most powerful nations, the United States. Many island nations are not so lucky.
Small island states, such as Dominica or the Marshall Islands, are also feeling the impact of climate change, especially as it alters the ocean surrounding them. This means more than just storms and rising sea levels, says Maxine Burkett, a professor of law at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who focuses on climate change law and policy. Climate change’s impact on the oceans affects the agriculture, infrastructure and even the psychology of the people on island nations. But they don’t have a large, powerful government to turn to for aid – instead, they are trying to highlight these issues on an international stage.
Oceans Deeply spoke with Burkett about how changing oceans are affecting small island states, and what legal actions, if any, they might take.

Maxine Burkett, professor of law at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. (Photo courtesy of Maxine Burkett)

Oceans Deeply: Can you give us an idea of how small island nations are currently threatened by sea level rise?
Maxine Burkett: It depends on where you are. There are so many islands that we need to be thinking of – at least 43 are part of the Alliance of Small Island States, which are seeing coastal erosion. A number of small islands have major infrastructure on the coastline: airports, harbors, sewage treatment plants, etc.
You’re also seeing the impact, in the Pacific, of saltwater intrusion into arable lands, so food resources are being affected as well by sea level rise. When you’re looking at a number of islands in the Pacific, taro is a staple [food] and the introduction of saltwater into those areas makes it more difficult to grow taro. We’ve seen this happening in Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.
Of course, in somewhere like the Marshall Islands the impact on food security is not just from the inability to grow food, but also the quality of the reef. There is a lot of concern about the state of the reefs and that affecting primary food sources and fish as a major source of protein.
We think a lot about sea level rise for island nations, but of course there are additional risks that are, in some cases, more near-term, and that could be a lack of freshwater resources – especially for these Pacific island nations where they rely a lot on rainfall for freshwater. That is actually the near-term concern: freshwater and drought.

On islands, resilient infrastructure is needed to keep rising sea levels at bay. Some islands are turning to the international community to help pay for it. (Photo by Kees van der Geest, Environmental Law Program, University of Hawaii, courtesy of Maxine Burkett)

Oceans Deeply: You have written about residents of island nations that may soon have to leave their homelands because of these climate impacts. That must have a psychological impact, as well.
Burkett: That’s right. The notion, to quote a [fellow] researcher, that “their grandchildren will not grow old on the island,” has an impact on them quite deeply.
Ultimately, people don’t want to leave their home. So we’re in an interesting space right now where we have to contemplate the complete uninhabitability of some of these islands, but we also have to contemplate some major engineering feats to make sure that doesn’t happen and people can stay in place. It is a real struggle.

Oceans Deeply: One of your papers, “Rehabilitation: A Proposal for a Climate Compensation Mechanism for Small Island States,” focuses on possible legal strategies to deal with these issues: What does rehabilitation and compensation mean in this context?
Burkett: This is a paper that is really trying to address loss and damage. That is, finding legal avenues for responding to complete losses of things that cannot be resuscitated as a result of climate change, and [legal avenues] for damages that may be resuscitated, but as of yet we don’t have the proper legal avenues to resolve.
Island nations have been trying to introduce “loss and damages” into the framework of the Convention on Climate Change for a couple of decades – since the early ’90s. They noted that there are impacts of climate change that you can’t adapt to; that will be so severe that you’ll need additional resources to allow states to bounce back from those losses. There were [several] mechanisms that they sought to address it, [including] this notion of rehabilitation. [Terms like] “liability concerns” or “compensation” are really big red flags in international negotiations, so “rehabilitation” was meant to suggest that this is an opportunity to make whole, as much as possible, communities that have suffered losses.

Oceans Deeply: Are you referring to compensation in a purely monetary sense?
Burkett: It doesn’t have to be. That’s something that is to be determined. The paper is starting the exercise of asking the kinds of questions that we need to ask, which are: Who’s eligible? What kind of remedy would they be open to receiving? If this is monetary, who would be paying into this potential global pool of resources that could help communities that have suffered losses and damages? What are the events that trigger the need for these rehabilitation mechanisms? It’s an exercise in asking the question and attempting to answer, but not conclusively.

The Republic of the Marshall Islands is just one of many island nations that are dealing with the impact of climate change on the surrounding ocean. (Photo by Kees van der Geest, Environmental Law Program, University of Hawaii, courtesy of Maxine Burkett)

Oceans Deeply: We are seeing these dramatic impacts more and more—Barbuda, for instance, is now uninhabited due to Hurricane Irma. What steps can small island nations take right now?
Burkett: Herein lies the difficulty – it seems like there ought to be a number of legal remedies that they can take. But, of course, this is the international community, and so the kinds of appeals that you saw on the opening day of the [United Nations] General Assembly are probably the most forceful demands that can be made. [Demands like:] “We have suffered great losses. We are disproportionate contributors to the problems, and we are especially suffering from them. Recognizing that inconsistency, we request greater aid, or more committed effort to reducing emissions and supporting adaptation.” And then, really building on the loss and damage provision so that so that there can be a sound framework for responding to these disasters after they happen.
In the U.S. you can imagine a scenario in which you bring the emitters to court, or cite violations in terms of environmental integrity, but that’s not available in the international community. So, the short answer is, I don’t know that they have a clear path right now besides those political appeals at the international stage.
If the circumstances were reversed – if we in the U.S. were experiencing the impacts of climate change to the extent the islands are, we would have a very different approach to it, and even more so if we were not a major contributor to the problem. I think that we can see the inequity there, and it is important to name it.
The upside is, understanding our impact and understanding our responsibility is the first step in getting us to better results.

Links

• Any policy for climate change refugees?
• Insight: A rising tide - how Hawaii is taking up the climate change fight
• Mapping and Responding to Climate-Induced Migration
• Paris Climate Deal: Island Nations Face Extinction From Rising Sea Levels
• How a Carbon Tax Can Build Blue Economies in Pacific Island Nations
• Ocean Warming Is Already Affecting Arctic Fish and Birds
• Can We Save Low-lying Island Nations From Rising Seas?
• How Small Island States Are Transforming Themselves Into Big Ocean Powers
• U.N. Meets in Bid to Reverse the Decline of the World’s Oceans