One of the strategies to deal with Climate Change is adaptation. It’s accepting the reality that it’s no longer business as usual and adjusting our way of life to live with the effects of a changing climate. Some of these adaptations include improving the healthcare system, developing climate resistant crops and building better infrastructure.
But there are limits to adaptation. When a place can no longer be protected, the last option is to relocate. The painful decision of leaving home or an entire community to escape the brunt of Mother Nature must be made. In the past, this move was unthinkable and very unlikely. Today however, it’s a reality.
In the island nation of Vanuatu – ranked in the Happy Planet Index as the happiest place on Earth in 2006 – the threat of rising oceans has made them make this difficult decision. Climate Change Minister of Vanuatu, Ralph Regenvanu, said a few days ago that as a response to a threat arising out of rising sea levels, the country has decided to draw up plans to relocate around “dozens of villages” - that inhabit long-established communities - within the next two years.
Vanuatu has a population of some 280,000 people spread across roughly 80 islands. It is among more than a dozen Pacific Island nations facing rising sea levels and fiercer storms. In April of 2020, Tropical Cyclone Harold caused widespread destruction in the country after making landfall as a category 5 storm. Vanuatu is a small country. What would happen if they ran out of safe land in the future?
And it’s not just small islands. Even the mighty United States (US) is making a drastic move to relocate its citizens. Recently, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs committed to grant three tribes $25 million each to relocate homes, schools, and critical infrastructure threatened by sea-level rise, flooding, and erosion. These are the first grants distributed under a program aimed at helping tribes cope with climate change.
The three communities — two in Alaska, and one in Washington State — will each get $25 million to move their key buildings onto higher ground and away from rising waters, with the expectation that homes will follow. The federal government will give eight more tribes $5 million each to plan for relocation. The project, funded by the Interior Department, is an acknowledgment that a growing number of places around the United States can no longer be protected against changes brought by a warming planet.
With 60% of the Philippine population living in low lying coastal zone, there is a possibility that we might do the same drastic move. The sea level in the Philippines is rising three times faster than the global average according to a climate scientist of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa).
Are we prepared?