Sustainability and the Rights of Nature in Practice

Cameron La Follette, Chris Maser, Cameron La Follette, Chris Maser

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429000386
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Derecho medioambiental

Sustainability and the Rights of Nature in Practice is the much-needed complementary volume to Sustainability and the Rights of Nature: An Introduction (CRC Press, May 2017). The first book laid out the international precursors for the Rights of Nature doctrine and described the changes required to create a Rights of Nature framework that supports Nature in a sustainable relationship rather than as an exploited resource. This follow-up work provides practitioners from diverse cultures around the world an opportunity to describe their own projects, successes, and challenges in moving toward a legal personhood for Nature. It includes contributions from Nepal, New Zealand, Canadian Native American cultures, Kiribati, the United States and Scotland, amongst others, by practitioners working on projects that can be integrated into a Rights of Nature framework. The authors also tackle required changes to shift the paradigm, such as thinking of Nature in a sacred manner, reorienting Nature's rights and human rights, the conceptualization of restoration, and the removal of large-scale energy infrastructure.

Curated by experts in the field, this expansive collection of papers will prove invaluable to a wide array of policymakers and administrators, environmental advocates and conservation groups, tribal land managers, and communities seeking to create or maintain a sustainable relationship with Nature.

Features:

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• Addresses existing projects that are successfully implementing a Rights of Nature legal framework, including the difference it makes in practice

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• Presents the voices of practitioners not often recognized who are working in innovative ways towards sustainability and the need to grant a voice to Nature in human decision-making

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• Explores new ideas from the insights of a diverse range of cultures on how to grant legal personhood to Nature, restrain damaging human activity, create true sustainability, and glimpse how a Rights of Nature paradigm can work in different societies

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• Details the potential pitfalls to Rights of Nature governance and land use decisions from people doing the work, as well as their solutions

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• Discusses the basic human needs for shelter, food, and community in entirely new ways: in relationship with Nature, rather than in conquest of it

Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429505959

Section II

The Struggle for Sustainability and the Rights of Nature

DOI: 10.1201/9780429505959-5

5

Kiribati and Climate Change

His Eminence Anote Tong

Contents

The Island Nation of Kiribati

The Crisis of Climate Change

Kiribati’s Response to Climate Change

Future Uncertainties for National Sovereignty

Conclusion

Notes

The Island Nation of Kiribati

The Republic of Kiribati, formerly known as the Gilbert Islands and a former colony of the United Kingdom, comprises three groups of 33 atoll islands scattered astride both the Equator and the International Date Line. It has the distinction of being the only country to occupy the four corners of the globe. Inclusive of its 200-mile (322-kilometre) Exclusive Economic Zone, it covers 1.3 million square miles (3.5 million square kilometres) of the centre of the Pacific Ocean, in contrast to its total landmass of just over 800 square kilometres (309 square miles). Atoll islands are coral islands that form atop submerged seamounts, typically aligned as a string according to the movement of the tectonic plate where they are located and the hotspots beneath the plate, which burn through the plate to form the seamounts. The islands are narrow strips of coral sand surrounding a lagoon, and are low lying, on average rising no more than 2 metres (6.5 feet) above sea level.

The people of Kiribati are of Micronesian ethnicity and, according to traceable history, have occupied these islands for around 3,000 years. The total population is about 120,000 people, spread over 20 of the inhabited islands, with over half the population now concentrated on a small portion of the main island of Tarawa. One of the most historic and fiercest conflicts of World War II was the Battle of Tarawa, fought on this tiny strip of island between the occupying Japanese forces and the U.S. Marines in 1943.1 Christmas Island, in the eastern group of Kiribati, was also the site of the hydrogen bomb atmospheric tests completed by the United Kingdom in the late 1950s.2

As a former colony of the United Kingdom, Kiribati has modelled its political system on the Westminster Parliamentary system but with modifications to make it a republic with close similarities to the U.S. presidential system. Since attaining independence from Britain in 1979, Kiribati has enjoyed unparalleled political stability, and, in spite of the comparatively low per-capita gross domestic product, the people have enjoyed a typically idyllic island community lifestyle without the usual rush and pressure of so-called industrialised modern society. Extreme poverty is not a part of life in Kiribati. As a society, the people of Kiribati remain relatively isolated from international events and social media. They are mostly unaware of, and therefore do not care much for, what goes on in the rest of the world, let alone what the implications are likely to be on their life or their future. In a typically traditional existence, most do not worry much beyond the next day, and as a nation and a people do not really plan much beyond daily existence, let alone the next generation.

Map of Kiribati in relation to other Pacific States. (Map courtesy of United States Congress, 1989.)

Being located on the Equator, the islands have always enjoyed the relative tranquillity of the doldrums, where cyclones often form but travel either southwards or to the north, but are not supposed to remain in the doldrums due to the rotation of the Earth.3 Wind speeds rarely exceed 40 mph, but on those rare occasions in the past when they have, severe damage often results due to the extreme vulnerability of the atoll islands.

The Crisis of Climate Change

For the most vulnerable countries on the frontline, climate change poses an existential challenge. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in 2007, was for the first time quite unequivocal in its projections of the rise in sea level, other impacts of the ongoing rise in global temperatures and the dire implications for the most vulnerable countries.4 The report also for the first time went significantly further than previously in resolving the ongoing controversy within the scientific community on the causes of the rise in global temperatures.

Subsequent reports of the IPCC, including the most recent one of October 2018, expand on the full implications for the global community if the 1.5 Centigrade-degree target temperature reduction is not met by 2030. These later reports have not only reaffirmed the predictions of the Fourth Assessment Report but have concluded that they were too conservative, and that it is more likely that the tipping points to serious and irreversible climate change will be reached much sooner than earlier predicted.5 Other independent reports by academic and research institutions which are being released and posted on social media virtually on a daily basis also indicate that both polar ice caps are melting much faster than earlier reported. In 2018, during the northern summer, extreme heat and unprecedented bush fire disasters caused severe damage to property and loss of life in the U.S. state of California.6 In January 2019 Australia issued public warnings due to the severe heat wave sweeping through the country.7 The frequency and intensity of storms in different regions of the world, including in the Southern and Central Pacific, have also become a common occurrence.

The question is: What has been the experience for the most vulnerable island countries in the Pacific Region to the impacts of climate change, in particular for Kiribati? Due to the inherent fragility of atoll island systems, extreme weather events have always been a threat to the stability of the island ecosystems, but on the rare occasions in past decades when there have been extra high tides and stronger-than-usual winds, the islands have been able to recover, and life gradually returned to normal. ‘Have you noticed a rise in sea level?’ is the question frequent...