Climate migration from Kiribati to start in 2020

People will be forced to leave Kiribati by 2020 as climate change and rising sea levels make parts of the Pacific island nation uninhabitable, according to the country’s president Anote Tong.

Addressing a climate change meeting in New Zealand on Tuesday, President Tong said that government measures including the construction of coastal walls and floating islands won’t be enough to stop emigration from Kiribati.

Tong said: “People are getting quite scared now and we need immediate solutions. This is why I want to rush the solutions so there will be a sense of comfort for our people.”

Kiribati is a string of 33 ring-shaped coral reefs, known as atolls, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the government bought land from its neighbour Fiji in 2014 to provide a home for climate migrants..

Tong explained to delegates in New Zealand’s capital Wellington that the people of Kiribati had to prepare to “migrate with dignity.”

Rising sea levels, the increasing frequency and intensity of tropical storms, and the acidification of ocean water are threatening to destroy the reef atolls in the coming years.

Greg Stone, Tong’s science advisor at the COP21 Paris climate summit in December, said brackish water is also damaging food crops, which is another factor that will lead to migration away from Kiribati.

Stone said: “The freshwater table is the thing people don’t think about. For every inch of sea-level rise, you lose 10 square feet of arable land. It seeps into the soil…. The Fiji government is the first nation to say if you need a place to live, you can come and live here.”