My last ‘conversation on climate’ for the year is with Dr. Morgan Wairiu from the Solomon Islands. Morgan is Deputy Director of the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PACE-SD) at the University of the South Pacific. We sat down over a delicious vegetarian lunch in Malmö, Sweden, in late October at a meeting of an international climate change body.
With a PhD in Environmental Soil Science, Morgan has served as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock with the Solomon Islands Government. He has worked on local development projects and national development policies and strategies, including as the Team Leader for the Pacific Risk Resilience Programme at Live & Learn Environmental Education based in Fiji. Morgan’s research interest is in climate change and risk resilience, with a focus on food security.
Morgan grew up in a rural coastal village in the Solomon Islands, a group of atolls in the South Pacific that are at the forefront of climate change. They are now experiencing sea level rise, coastal erosion, and inundation of coastal land areas, affecting food production and food security. In our discussions, he described how, having come from a background of community living in a rural base, experiencing these changes has direct impact not only on people’s natural resource-based livelihoods, but also on the way you think about these changes. There are real existential concerns, as most of the islands are only one to two metres above sea level. Apart from relocation to higher areas, which is happening throughout the Pacific when water supplies and soil become too saline, recent studies have shown that islands in Micronesia have been completely lost under the rising seas, as have five atolls in the Solomon Islands.
Image of the Solomon Islands by Jim Lounsbury – Wikipedia, Copyrighted free use, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9403460
Penny: Morgan, what is it that concerns you the most about the unfolding climate crisis – what are your main fears about it?
Morgan: Well, in terms of fears, actually it is what is happening now, the experience of the people, as well as myself. We have been living through harsh conditions that communities haven’t experienced before – more tropical Category 5 cyclones, which are now happening regularly. We also now have more warmer days, which affects people’s livelihoods in terms of effort and time. And as you know, extreme events, things like hurricanes and tropical cyclones, will normally wipe out the livelihoods of a whole community or a household in a few hours or a day.
Penny: Do you have any hopes at the moment?
Morgan: I have been thinking about the whole COP process we’ve been going through, this year now will be the 23rd year of negotiations for bringing down greenhouse gas emissions. So far, over the last 23 years, there hasn’t been any decrease, emissions keep increasing. So I’m beginning to have less hope in the COP process, but what I’m looking at is, are there any other alternative ways around this? Now that for almost 23 years we’ve been trying through the UNFCCC COP process, and we are not achieving what we are supposed to do.
Penny: And what would you consider alternative ways that might be positive?
Morgan: There are three important world commitments that occurred around the same time. You have the Paris Agreement, you have the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and you have the UN Sustainable Development Goals. So it’s very important to see how the synergies between these three very important agreements come together, so that we can commit to sustainable development, while at the same time reducing emissions. So this is where I am placing my hope – on these three processes being able to come together somehow and reinforce each other.
Morgan described to me how growing up in a relaxed coastal village, he and other children spent most of their time playing on the beach and “being always in the sea”. As he explained, “so the sea really is our home”, with children learning almost intuitively to swim and to fish. As he said, “that’s something you do when you start crawling, or start walking, you walk right down into the sea and start swimming, you just learn as it comes. And fishing – all these come naturally, you just start doing these things.”
After attending a church high school, he studied for an undergraduate degree in environmental science, inspired by the environmental movement of the 1980s.
His Masters’ and PhD degrees explored carbon sequestration in forest soils and marine ecosystems. A decade ago, as climate change became an increasingly critical issue for the region, he was part of the initial team at the University of the South Pacific to develop a programme on climate change and sustainable development.
Penny: You have described the range of impacts that you are already seeing throughout the Pacific region. But personally, for you, were there any transformational moments when you looked at something, like for example beach erosion, and you suddenly realised how serious the situation was?
Morgan: Well the most important thing is when you visit farmers and you see their crops dying because of saltwater intrusion. You know the way most farmers in the Pacific cultivate their root crops is they dig up the ground and they plant their crops like giant taro in a pit, and they rely on the groundwater to support the growth of those crops. So you witness all the crops failing, and they have nowhere else to plant. And that really affects the way you see things, you start thinking about what’s the future, in terms of food production, for these people?
Penny: So when we think of the situation, and working in this area, it can be quite depressing at times – you are seeing it really in front of your eyes, every day. What are the things you use to make meaning out of it, or even just that comfort you in some way?
Morgan: Well, for me, the thing that I see most satisfying about the work that I am doing is that I am involved in the capacity building and training on climate change of the future leaders of the Pacific. So I am already seeing some of the work that students who have come through our programme are doing within their respective countries, and in terms of leadership at an international level. Quite a few of our students are already part of the negotiating teams in their national governments, some are already working at UN agencies, and some are working at the community level. So I see this level of training and capacity building for future leaders in the Pacific as very satisfying and it inspires me to do more.
Penny: And do you see climate change as a spiritual or cultural problem in any way, or do you prefer to treat it more factually?
Morgan: No, I think that spiritual and cultural considerations need to come into play in this whole thing, because it’s no longer a science issue, the science is already very clear. People need to take action at the individual level, as well as at the community and national level – and this behavioural change has to have some elements of cultural and spiritual thinking. Because we need to consider humanity in this whole process – there are people in certain parts of the world who will be directly impacted and will lose their entire livelihoods and way of life because of the crisis of climate change. So if we don’t bring in the humanity angle to it, then we are not looking after the whole global system, but we are more doing it on the part of economics or whatever.
Penny: Yes, but not out of a full idea of our common humanity? (We agree.)
Morgan: So that’s a very important consideration, we need to bring that humanity element into it, so that we start thinking about other people, and not only about you. So that whatever you do, you also think about how it might affect other people. It’s really about the conviction that one has, in terms of how your activities affect other people. How do we connect with other people, and how do we connect with nature? So it brings the whole element of spirituality as well as natural thinking around the issue of climate change, more than really thinking about it as completely a scientific area.
Penny: Yes, or just a technical response area. That’s so interesting because that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to try and develop this series of blogs, because of a strong feeling that we can’t atomise our response to it. I mean we need the scientific and the technical, sure, it’s all very important, but I think one of the reasons why we haven’t been able to generate more action may be because we haven’t been able to really get people to see what you just said, that this actually is about our mutual humanity, and how we deal with each other.
Morgan: Right.
Penny: Finally, what are the plans for the Solomon Islands, long term, or even medium term? Do you see there will be a point where people won’t be able to keep moving to higher ground – will a major relocation be necessary, and when would that be, do you think?
Morgan: Well, it’s necessary and already the government and the people, as well as the church, are planning for this. Because at the end of the day, if there should be no drastic change to the global emissions status quo, then definitely that will be the only most transformational action – relocation or migration. Although some adaptation options are on the table, but if nothing changes, then relocation, migration, will be the ultimate goal.
Penny: To where?
Morgan: That’s the issue – to where.
Penny: And the implications of that. Cultural, psychological …
Morgan: And also the issue of sovereignty – this is now one of the issues that the countries in the Pacific are thinking about, because you might get a whole country like Kiribati under water sometime. What happens to a country when there is no land? All you have is a sea area – so how do you define a country in terms of sovereignty?
Penny: Wow. Yes. Has the Solomon Islands government identified a place to relocate to, are they engaging with anybody around that?
Morgan: Not at the moment, but that’s the thinking. Very soon they will start talking with other countries about how best to address this issue of relocation.
Penny: Are you already seeing young people who leave the islands, who might have returned, now not returning anymore because of this issue, knowing that one of these days a lot of the islands are not going to be inhabitable anymore?
Morgan: Well for Kiribati they have that long-term planning already, they are working on that policy. So once they get their students going abroad to study in tertiary institutions, then they encourage the students, as well as the recipient countries, to accept them to stay on and work. Although they will lose their identity, but that’s the only solution.
Penny: It’s devastating. It’s really devastating.
Morgan: Yes. Yes it is.