PINA

Hawaii faces a range of environmental problems caused by global warming, impacts worsened by practices that critics say have ignored the local ecology.

They say reviving traditional values can reduce the damage by limiting coastal erosion, reversing the rising acidity of coastal waters and lessening flooding from intense storms.

Coastal hotels and homes already are seeing the effect of rising sea levels, which could cost the state’s principal island of Oahu 40 percent of its beaches by 2050, according to one study. That also would harm tourism, which is the largest source of income for the islands.

Even under an optimistic global scenario assuming lower greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels will rise 30 centimetres by the end of the century, according to current estimates. Under a worst-case scenario, ocean levels could rise more than 2 metres by 2100, devastating coastal regions and displacing whole communities on these islands.

The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels.

Both air and ocean temperatures are rising, and acidity is increasing as oceans absorb more carbon dioxide, damaging coral reefs and sea life.

Changes in weather patterns cause erratic precipitation, and in some places, drought.

“Some rainfall is on average going up over time. Some is going down,” said Victoria Keener, who studies climate change and natural resource management at Honolulu’s East-West Centre. “In Hawaii, we’ve actually seen drying out,” with increased fire risk in parts of the islands and more rapid warming and environmental changes at higher elevations, she said.

Unstable weather triggered severe storms and flooding on Maui and other islands in March, destroying homes and bridges and providing a preview, scientists said, of what can happen in the future.

Moreover, climate change has additional consequences, Keener said, contaminating “groundwater wells near the coast,” harming agriculture and threatening infrastructure.

Honolulu is a modern urban centre, and the island of Oahu, where the city is located, is home to some 950,000 people. As the population has grown, authorities have paved over natural waterways to control flooding, blocking the natural watersheds that once linked the mountains, lowlands and coast in a single ecosystem.

Celeste Connors of Hawaii Green Growth, a non-profit organisation that works to implement the United Nations sustainable development goals, stands on the edge of the watershed above the Manoa Valley, which drains rainfall from the mountains toward the coast. Nearby is a restored heiau, an ancient religious and ceremonial site located on the grounds of the Manoa Heritage Centre.

Connor said this was the centre of a natural system that linked these hills to the farming lowlands and coastal Waikiki.

It is called an ahupua’a, which refers both to the land unit and the system of managing resources from “ridge to reef,” said Connors, all driven by an ethic of stewardship that Hawaiians call mālama.

There are efforts around the islands to renew traditional farming methods and values. On the east or windward shore of Oahu, farmer Nick Reppun works for a non-profit group that grows traditional staple foods such as breadfruit and taro, restoring these lowland wetlands to their natural state.

The farm borders a housing development in an area once slated for luxury homes, a marina and golf course before a public agency intervened in 1991. Today, conservation and heritage groups are restoring the mountain watershed and coastal aquaculture pond, reviving another ancient, interconnected ahupua’a.

“We’re just trying to do what we know has been done and what we know worked before,” said Reppun, farm director at the project called Kāko’o ‘Ōiwi. “We’re not reinventing the wheel with these systems, just trying to revive them,” he said.

Today, these islands are far from self-sufficient, importing 85% to 90% of their food from outside — something long seen as a vulnerability. Researcher Hunter Heaivilin of the University of Hawaii noted that there were efforts in World War I to secure the food supply and boost the local production of taro.

In 1949, the islands suffered a 177-day shipping strike, and a 100-day West Coast dock strike slashed imports in 1971, causing shortages and again highlighting the problem.

Heaivilin said today, bottom-up efforts to increase self-sufficiency include food hubs that connect small farms and buyers.

There are no easy solutions to the problems of climate change, but experts say islands are ground zero for studying climate change and are a repository of knowledge about community resilience.

The local Aloha+ Challenge tracks progress toward the UN sustainable development goals, measuring successes and shortcomings in areas from clean energy to food production. Connors of Hawaii Green Growth said the challenge, which takes its name from the traditional Hawaiian greeting, suggests a way of life rooted in these islands.

Alapaki Luke, a teacher of Hawaiian language and culture at Honolulu Community College, points to a wetland taro patch that traps the silt that would otherwise flow downstream to the ocean. Located on the grounds of the School of Hawaiian Knowledge at the University of Hawaii, he said it showcases traditional wisdom about land and water use and ways to prevent erosion.

“I’m not about going back 400 or 500 years,” he said. “But we can use the foundation, which we call the kahua, of the ‘ike, the native tradition, in a modern setting,” using ancient knowledge that he said is state of the art.

SOURCE: VOA/PACNEWS

The Ambassador of the European Union in the Pacific, Sujiro Seam, has called on major emitters to be more ambitious in their reduction of carbon emissions.

In a video posted on Twitter, Seam highlighted the findings of the recently issued Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which found that there is a slim chance that the world could stop temperatures rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius that must be immediately grasped, suggesting the world is at a tipping point on climate disaster.

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change clearly tells us that more needs to be done to achieve the objective of the Paris Agreement on climate to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees,” Seam said in the video posted on Twitter.

“This is particularly important for the Pacific because this is the region of the world most exposed to the negative impacts of climate change, especially with sea level rise and more frequent and more severe extreme weather events.

“Major emitters need to be more ambitious in their reduction of carbon emission.”

He added that the European Union leads the way with a commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050.

“But our partners need to join us to achieve an ambitious objective in the COP26 in Glasgow,” he said.

COP26 is a forthcoming climate change conference about science and innovation in the face of climate disaster.

The conferences are annual meetings held in the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) and assess participating countries’ progress on reducing emissions.

A COP26 statement issued in July this year highlighted a meeting of Pacific Island leaders with COP26 President-Designate Alock Sharma.

“Leaders agreed with the COP26 President that the world needs to step up its emissions targets and its actions to keep the 1.5 temperature limit alive, noting that we have now reached levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we have not seen for 3 million years,” the statement reads.

“Leaders talked about the need for greater action sooner, commenting that flattening the curve on temperature warming by the middle of the century would be too late, that emissions must peak by 2025. Early peaking is necessary not only to protect climate vulnerable Pacific SIDS but also larger, more resilient countries who will also experience greater severity and frequency of heat domes, wildfires, floods and storms and therefore need to take action to close the mitigation gap. High emitters, especially G20, must commit to higher mitigation targets now, and COP26 must set the path for peaking emissions by 2025. Finance and access to finance are lagging behind the needs of countries.

According to the statement, participants highlighted the importance of including super pollutants, such as methane, black carbon and HFCs, in reduction targets.

Rapid reduction of these powerful GHGs could make a significant difference to the achievability of the 1.5 degrees’ target, the statement reads.

SOURCE: SAMOA OBSERVER/PACNEWS

The runway of the capital city’s airport jostles for space among the homes crammed around it, which themselves make way for two of the largest buildings – the nation’s parliament and the Princess Margaret Hospital – both with water views.

In fact, everyone has ocean views in Funafuti, the capital of Tuvalu. The entire country is built on three impossibly thin and meandering reef islands that barely manage to poke their heads above the waves of the vast expanse of the Pacific on one side and the Te Namo lagoon to the other.

Often the distance from one coast of Tuvalu to the other is just a few metres with the waves of the ocean always in earshot.

But it’s those waves that pose the biggest threat to Tuvalu’s existence.

A report released last week has only further added to the worst fears of the people living Tuvalu that their country is living on borrowed time.

That more and more of their precious land will be gobbled up by the sea.

There are even concerns the entire nation, which at its highest point is just 4.5 metres above sea level, could eventually vanish.

And it’s not just Tuvalu. Much of the Solomon Islands, the Marshall Islands and many others in the western Pacific barely rise above the water.

“It sounds harsh, but it’s really hard to imagine some of these low lying places still existing,” climate scientist Shayne McGregor of Monash University told news.com.au.

Last week’s United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report made for sobering reading.

It stated Australia had already warmed 1.4C and globally temperatures could be 1.8 hotter by 2040 and 3.5C by the end of the century.

United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres said the internationally agreed aim of keeping the overall temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels was now “perilously close” to being broken.

He said the report, which has been released ahead of a crucial climate conference in Glasgow, UK, in November, was “code red for humanity”.

Another key warning from the report was on sea level rises which have already gone up by around 20cm between 1901 and 2018.

A further 15-25cm of sea level rise is expected between now and 2050.

Beyond that date, how much the ice melts and the oceans creep up by will depend on future emissions, the IPCC report stated.

If we manage to belch fewer emissions, future sea rises might be around 38cm higher than the 1995-2014 average by 2100. But if we keep on belching with abandon, that rise could be around 77cm.

That’s not good news for Tuvalu’s 11,000 residents who live on just 26km square of habitable land some 12,000 kilometres north of Fiji.

An analysis by the United Nations found as many as 350,000 people living in low-lying atolls in the South Pacific could eventually need rehousing overseas if sea levels render their current homes uninhabitable.

Already Tuvalu’s once fertile soils are becoming more barren as they absorb sea salt allowing little to grow. Underground water storages have also been inundated by ocean water meaning locals are reliant on rainwater.

Addressing the Pacific Island Forum meeting on 06 August, Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Kausea Natano said missing the 1.5C target would be “disastrous for the Pacific”.

“There is no doubt that sea level rise continues to threaten the very core of our existence, of our statehood, our sovereignty, our people and our identity.”

Prof McGregor told news.com.au that the western tropical Pacific had already seen sea levels rise more than elsewhere due to strong episodes of the El Nino Southern Oscillation, better known as El Ninos and La Ninas.

But that was simply sloshing more of what sea water there was in the world towards the Pacific, meaning there was consequently less water somewhere else.

Indeed, sea levels around the world are neither static nor do they rise or fall exactly in uniform. The oceans are turbulent rather than still. Something as everyday as the tides can vary enormously even around the Australian continent.

Also the effect of a higher sea levels will not be the same in every location. Some places will have cliffs or man-made coastal defences protecting the land.

What’s not in doubt, however, is that the Pacific’s low lying islands and atolls – with no natural or man-made protections – would be under permanent threat from higher sea levels.

“The highest point above sea level in Tuvalu may be 4.6 metres but the general height from sea level is something like 1.2 metres which is very low and they don’t have a lot of defences,” said Prof McGregor.

“With an additional 77 centimetres of sea level rise as well as the variability of these El Nino and La Nina events you could imagine that most of Tuvalu will be underwater some years.”

A report in 2016 found five reef islands in the Solomon Islands, situated north east of Queensland and close to Papua New Guinea, had vanished and a further six had eroded.

By some accounts the seas have risen by 15cms around the Solomons in the past 20 years.

The Marshall Islands, a country of 60,000 people living on 29 low lying coral reefs in the western Pacific, has been called the most endangered nation on earth due to the risk of climate change.

Remarkably, however, the Marshall Islands have actually been growing in size by 13 percent as waves deposit sediment from the reefs onto shore filling in channels and extending beaches.

But this natural process may not be enough to counteract an ever rising sea.

And certainly that one respite is not happening in Tuvalu.

Nonetheless, in the capital of Funafuti, the everyday buzz of life continues. Ships are unloaded, supermarkets are filled with fresh produce – now mostly from overseas, fish are caught and church bells ring.

But the Pacific is an ever constant presence for Tuvaluans. If the world does nothing, and the ocean rises further, it could slowly take the city, and all of Tuvalu, away.

SOURCE: NEWS.COM.AU/PACNEWS