The change of CosmosSkye Hohmann, New Internationalist: Climate change can strip away an atoll's natural physical defences... Flying in to Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, this is heart-wrenchingly obvious... Elevations average mere metres above the sea level. In December 2008, and again in February this year, abnormally high tides inundated the capital, temporarily flooding houses and roads and raising health concerns as waves washed over cemeteries and mixed raw sewage into the standing water...
The effects of rising sea levels are evident in coastline erosion, where waves have undercut coconut palms, felling the trees into the deceptively quiet turquoise waters of the lagoons. Changing weather patterns are beginning to erode the traditional knowledge so long essential for life on these fragile islands...
The culture on these islands is deeply interconnected with the land... Steps are being taken to enable inhabitants to remain on their traditional lands for as long as possible... It is perhaps for this reason that the Marshall Islands have no official resettlement plans...
Climate change has strengthened local distrust of modern, Western culture. [Peter] Rudiak-Gould says that the idea dovetails with local notions of cultural decline. 'When the term "climate change" was translated into Marshallese, they used a word for "climate" that means cosmos -- environment in the widest possible sense. So when scientists say that the climate is changing, what people are actually hearing is that scientists say that the cosmos is changing, and there's all sorts of evidence of that, not just environmental change, but social and cultural change...
There is little that Marshall Islanders can do to stem the rising tides. But reinvigorating traditional subsistence lifestyles means that islanders can control at least one aspect of their changing cosmos. While climate change may be eroding the islands, it's galvanizing Marshallese culture; this culture is greatly needed in such an uncertain time in this low-lying nation.
