Solomon Islands’ sinking fate belies cheery Pacific image

Honiara / DPA

Robert Satu has spent his whole life in a community near Honiara in the Solomon Islands, a South Pacific nation where steep hills often leave little space for settlements. “From the main road to the sea was more than 120 metres,” the village elder says in a documentary about the effects of climate change.
“It’s now 55 metres, half of the village is now left … The water or the sea is now pushing us up and you see the main road, we can’t move up.” “I think the best thing is we have to move out from this place. So I’m afraid,” he adds in a YouTube video in Fishing Village as the little town is named.
The Solomons, a state made up of hundreds of islands and with a population of around half a million, is a six-and-a-half hour-flight north of Sydney, Australia. “Discover the world’s best kept secret,” the country’s tourism board says invitingly, its website illustrated with pictures of pristine white beaches, azure waters and cheery locals.
The national radio station is called “Radio Happy Isles.” But the advertising belies the fact that the islands have become an unfortunate symbol of climate change. Earlier this year, scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia said they had documented for the first time the loss of five reef islands in the remote Solomons due to rising sea levels and coastal erosion.
The study published in Environmental Research Letters said that another six islands had been severely eroded. The five missing islands of between one and five hectares were not inhabited, but had supported “dense tropical vegetation” that was at least 300 years old, according to the Australian scientists.
On the islands of Nuatambu, home to 25 families, 11 houses have been washed away since 2011. “This is the first scientific evidence … that confirms the numerous anecdotal accounts from across the Pacific of the dramatic impacts of climate change on coastlines and people,” the researchers, led by Simon Albert, wrote on The Conversation. “For the past 20 years, the Solomon Islands have been a hotspot for sea-level rise. Here the sea has risen at almost three times the global average, around 7-10 mm per year since 1993.”
“Fishermen used to cut back the mangroves on the islands’ coasts to be able to land better, and planted crops in the forests,” Wulf Killmann, the director of the climate change programme at Germany’s international development contractor GIZ.
“That was OK when the conditions were reliable and the population was manageable.” Mangroves are trees that grow in salty mud at the sea edge, creating mudflats that protect the land from erosion.
But climate change has brought some devastating consequences: coastal erosion as storms become more unpredictable; coral reefs dying as water temperatures rise, and because of that fish stocks depleting; heavier rainfall, which causes landslides inland. The dwindling resources have to feed a rapidly growing population. GIZ is working on several projects on the island of Choiseul. Different types of tubers such as taro, yams, manioc and sweet potatoes which don’t die from excessive rainfall are being planted in nurseries, according to Killmann.
Lines of tough grass are being planted across steep hillsides so that they catch earth dislodged by heavy rains and form natural terraces which can then host bigger plants.
Vertical ropes are being placed around the coast with a weight at one end and a buoy on the surface of the ocean. Plankton gathers around the rope and that in turn attracts fish that no longer have reefs as food sources.
Climate change will only be stopped by the reduction of damaging emissions, says Killmann. But if it happens anyway, programmes like those on the Solomons are needed to help people adapt to the tougher world climate change will leave them to cope with. “The results are promising,” he adds.