Island Nations Looking To Maintain Sovereignty If Lands Become Uninhabitable Due To Sea Level Rise

Island Nations Looking To Maintain Sovereignty If Lands Become Uninhabitable Due To Sea Level Rise


Global sea level rise has put a handful of nations at risk of extinction -- small island states in the Pacific and Indian oceans. But this week, a collection of international lawyers and politicians have begun work to ensure that doesn't happen.

They can't prevent what many scientists see as the physical inevitability: a rise in ocean levels of 1 to 2 meters (3 to 6 feet) by 2100, even if all greenhouse gas emitting into the atmosphere were to cease tomorrow. Rather, they are exploring ways to use existing formal and informal rules that would allow many nations to continue as legal entities entitled to ocean fishing and mineral exploration rights, even if their entire populations were forced to relocate elsewhere.

The tiny nations of the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati and more are among those at most risk in the Pacific. These atoll nations are among the lowest-lying in the world, and should their archipelagos not completely submerge, it's likely that rising sea levels and extreme saltwater flooding will permanently damage freshwater supplies and destroy agriculture, making them uninhabitable. The Maldives and Seychelles in the Indian Ocean face the same risks.

But at a three-day discussion on their legal options at Columbia University, wrapping up today, scholars are pointing out ways that these states can still maintain an identity and international legal authority, even as they lose all their habitable territory.

"It's important to maintain a government that can defend its interests in the international arena," advised international law expert Jenny Grote Stoutenburg of the University of California, Berkeley.

Creating a new field of law

Conceived last year by the government of the Marshall Islands, this week's three-day seminar on "Legal Implications of Rising Seas and a Changing Climate" is the first to gather experts together to develop a formal body of knowledge that can guide the most vulnerable nations, should their worst fears become reality.

Hosted by Columbia Law School, the event drew hundreds of international law experts, maritime lawyers, government officials and diplomats from distant island states and representatives from the United States, Australia, South Korea and more. The United Nations has yet to take up the sensitive topic, but the large number of U.N. officials participating in the talks suggested that the world body eventually will.

"There's been a certain amount of academic discourse on some of these issues, and certainly at the U.N. climate negotiations there is some talk of them, but the General Assembly hasn't taken any action on these questions," noted Michael Gerrard, head of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

The questions are serious ones, and at the same time intellectually interesting.

What happens to the people forced to relocate, and what is their citizenship status? Do their governments survive, and if so, do they retain their full seats at the United Nations, even though they have no habitable land to control? And do they still control the fisheries and mineral rights to the surrounding seas they now enjoy, or do those become international waters?

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It is good to finally see this being addressed. What will happen to those who will need to move due to such events as sea level rise, erosion, subsidence, salt intrusion that destroys agriculture, etc., making their land uninhabitable? How would they be assimilated into society? We have already seen instances in the Pacific where people of island nations were refused entry to Australia. In a world of overpopulation and scarcer resouces, millions of people needing to move in the future due to the effects of this will be a huge crisis.

This is crucial because it is about nations that go under water still being able to retain their international sovereignty in the face of losing the land their nation was represented by. Questions will arise regarding citizenship status, laws, culture of the land, resources they used for their livelihoods and their very identity. This opens up legal questions we have have never had to consider on such a huge scale. One of those questions for me is compensation. Would those who say, farmed agricultural lands now submerged be entitled to compensation for lands lost to the seas through climate change? If so, from whom? Rich nations that contributed to the effects? So I suppose the question really is, if a country sinks under the ocean, is it still considered a country? Is a country defined by its land, or its people?

The Inuit people of the Arctic are losing their home as well (also to expanded exploration and proposed oil drilling), andi t is all they have known for centuries. Where would they go and how would they survive in a world they have never known and cannot make a living in? This is so huge and we have been so remiss in not even considering the world that will result from this. We really need to be planning for the future instead of funding useless "wars", and I do fear many will be lost.

It will be an uncertain future for those affected by the worst of this. It comes down to our responsibility to our fellow man. Can we look beyond the politics of it to see the humanity in it? I hope, but have my doubts. There are already climate refugees in places that are going dry and the MSM says nothing.

This crisis is the test of the true moral courage and humanity of the human species. X2SHGUSFM7ZX

China Facing Worst Drought In Half A Century

China Facing Worst Drought In Half A Century

Central China’s worst drought in more than 50 years is drying reservoirs and stalling rice planting, and threatens crippling power shortages as hydroelectric output slows, state media said yesterday.

Rainfall levels from January to last month in the drainage basin of the Yangtze, China’s longest and most economically important river, have been 40 percent lower than average levels of the past 50 years, the China Daily said.

The national flood and drought control authority has ordered the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric project, to increase its discharge of water by 10 percent to 20 percent for the next two weeks.

The measure is aimed at sending badly needed water to the Yangtze’s middle and lower reaches for drinking and irrigation.

Watermarks in more than 1,300 reservoirs in Hubei Province, where the dam is located, have dropped below allowable discharge levels for irrigation, the paper quoted Hubei Reservoir Management Director Yuan Junguang (袁俊光) as saying.

Rainfall in some areas is as much as 80 percent lower than usual, while the provinces of Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and Zhejiang along with Shanghai municipality are mired in their worst droughts since 1954.

“Without adequate water, we lost the spring planting season for rice,” Hubei farmer Zhou Xingtao was quoted as saying.

The paper said many other farmers in Hubei have lost their existing crops or given up on planting summer rice, fearing the emergency water supplies will be inadequate to sustain their fields, with more hot and dry weather forecast.

The agricultural impact is likely to further alarm officials already trying to tame high prices of key items such as food.

China — and the Yangtze river region in particular — is prone to the alternating threats of crippling drought followed by devastating flooding.

Just last summer, sustained torrential rainfall across the region caused widespread flooding and even some concern over whether the giant Three Gorges Dam would be able to contain the deluge.

More than 3,000 people were reported killed in the flooding and related landslides.

Nearly every year, some part of China suffers its worst drought in decades, and meteorological officials have said previously the extreme weather may be because of climate change.

The State Grid, China’s state-owned power distributor, reportedly said this week that 10 of its provincial-level power grids were suffering severe shortages because of the drought’s impact on hydroelectric generation, including grids in Shanghai and the heavily populated southwestern Chongqing region.

China could face a summer electricity shortage of 30 gigawatts — the most severe power shortfall since 2004, the company said. (end of excerpt.)




Just take stock of all of the places globally affected now by biodistress resulting in erratic rainfall patterns and storms causing destruction of agriculture that is helping to bring prices up. And connect that to the movements of companies like Monsanto salivating for biodistress to worsen so they can make a killing on pushing GM wheat and chemicals and their biopirated seeds to "save the world." I am not one to believe off hand that everything is a conspiracy, but this has all the earmarks of one. This is one big reason why oil and big ag lobbies are against any sort of move to address climate change. They stand to make BIG money from other peoples' misery with terminator seeds and imputs that will simply perpetuate the very climate change we should be addressing in a monoculture world, and in the process they will own the available potable water as well. And this also illustrates the futility of dams in places where such droughts are possible/common. We need solar power! We need to conserve water! We need food sovereignty!

When the water ends: Africa's climate conflicts

When the water ends:Africa's climate conflicts

This is now reaching a point where climate related conflicts are also occurring amongst tribes. Water evaporation, decreasing water levels, drought, desertification, all leading to lack of crops, death of livestock and fish and the pastoralist culture being drastically affected by the changing climate. This will lead to climate refugees and already is, but many times it is the men who leave, leaving behind the women and children in order to look for a better place while the women are left trying to deal with the consequences.

Africa, Asia and the Middle East are cited as areas where water scarcity will only be getting much worse as the effects become more pronounced. It really does make all of these wars seem so meaningless when we could be using our resources to better mankind instead, no? Also remember, in these areas of Africa culture and tradition are big parts of their lives, with many not understanding what climate change is all about. People will not be able to help themselves if education is not part of this equation and they continue to live in countries with political corruption that allows the privitzation of what little resources they already have. These include landgrabs taking place by multinationals in collusion with other governments and organizations to grow biofuel and megadams which many times move water away from where it is needed most.