‘Every Day the Ocean Is Eating Away at the Land’

Between Hawaii and New Zealand, a remote United States territory is home to a strategic American military base, the Pele U.S. Army Reserve Center — and about 44,600 islanders trying to survive onslaughts of extreme weather.

Heat-trapping pollution that is causing global ice caps to melt and seas to expand is also spurring the Pacific Ocean that surrounds American Samoa’s half-dozen volcanic islands to rise almost three times faster than the global average for oceans.

These effects of climate change — along with seismic activity that is prompting the U.S. territory to sink — are part of one-two punch raising questions about the sustainability of human life on narrow islands made up largely of flat coastlines in the South Pacific.

For inhabitants, the lack of global progress in cutting carbon emissions that drive climate change could hardly be more palpable.

Rising seas drive higher tides that reach far inland. Waterfront villages suffer recurring floods that have left dozens of coastal homes uninhabitable. Medical facilities located close to the ocean are in peril, raising questions about how long islanders will be able to access local care. Not even the dead are spared; the rising sea has unearthed corpses from burial grounds.

The U.S. territory’s Gov. Lemanu Peleti Mauga summed up the big-picture problem as he sees it: “While the world is talking about how to mitigate climate change, every day the ocean is eating away at the land in American Samoa and all the islands in the Pacific.”

Speaking at a climate change fellowship program in Honolulu last fall that brought together representatives of eight Pacific island nations and territories to learn about Hawaii’s pioneering efforts to move its energy system away from oil and toward renewable sources, Gov. Mauga moved his hands inches apart and said: “Our islands are this big and, maybe 20 years from now, they will be gone.”

It all raises questions. For one, where can the Pacific Ocean’s impoverished, low-lying islands turn to find a decarbonization game plan that inspires hope for a meaningful transition from fossil fuel-dependent electrical systems to renewable energy? And where might government leaders and international institutions find a real-world model they can mimic?

The conference offered attendees a possible answer: Hawaii.
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