Kiribati man fights in New Zealand courts for protection as ‘climate refugee’

When someone seeks refugee status from a government, it's usually because they're fleeing from persecution or war, but a man from the island nation of Kiribati is currently fighting in New Zealand courts for he and his family to be declared refugees due to climate change.

Kiribati is a nation of around 100,000 people, stretched across 33 islands in the Pacific northeast of Australia and New Zealand. Most of the islands of this nation are atolls — coral reefs that stick up out of the surface of the ocean — with their highest point being only one or two metres above sea level, making this one of the lowest-lying nations on Earth. Tides coming in and going out can have a big impact on islands that close to sea level, but unusually high tides, called king tides, can make things even worse.

According to the Associated Press, the transcript of the man's immigration case says that, starting in 1998, these king tides began regularly breaching the defenses that Kiribati has in place to protect villages against high tides. These tides flooded the man's overcrowded village with knee-deep water, and with no sewers in the village, people became sick as the drinking water supply became contaminated.

"There's no future for us when we go back to Kiribati," the man said to New Zealand's Immigration and Protection Tribunal, according to the transcript. "Especially for my children. There's nothing for us there."

And he could be right, in a very literal sense.

In 1999, two islands of Kiribati — Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea — disappeared under the Pacific Ocean. Neither island was inhabited, but with water levels rising up to half a metre by the end of this century, more of these island are going to be submerged. At the very least, they'll be made uninhabitable by higher tides or as the sea water saturates the soil, making it difficult or impossible to grow anything there. There is some hope for the larger islands, as apparently reclamation projects and engineering have actually increased the size of the three most heavily-populated islands — Betio, Bairiki and Nanikai — but there's really only so much that these efforts can do against the rising sea.

Earlier this year, Kiribati president Anote Tong urged the citizens of the country to emigrate elsewhere and the government has been offering them job training to make them more desirable to other countries.

[ More Geekquinox: U.S. government shutdown will take a heavy toll on sciences and health services ]

The tribunal rejected the man's case for refugee status, as it said that there was no evidence that the man or his family faced imminent danger from the environmental conditions in their home village. Also, according to the Canadian Press, tribunal member Bruce Burson said the claim was also rejected because the family did not face any conditions that were different from the rest of the population of Kiribati. Michael Kidd, the lawyer representing the Kiribati man and his family, is set to take it all the way to New Zealand's Supreme Court, however legal experts apparently don't give the case much chance of succeeding.

One benefit that may come from this case, whether it ultimately succeeds or not, is that the definition of refugee may be expanded to include other reasons for being displaced from your home. Since sea level rise is only one problem that we're going to face due to climate change, people impacted by droughts, expanding deserts and flooding due to increased rainfall may need these kinds of protections too.

(Photo courtesy: Reuters/David Gray)

Geek out with the latest in science and weather.
Follow @ygeekquinox on Twitter!