Antinuclear

Australia’s forgotten island people affected by rising sea levels

Rising seas pose a cultural threat to Australia’s ‘forgotten people’  The Conversation,  Elaine Kelly  Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Cultural Studies at University of Technology, Sydney 27 November 2014 While you may have heard about the increasing threat that climate change and rising seas pose to Pacific islands — already forcing some communities to move — Australia has its own group of islands that are just as threatened.

For communities in the Torres Strait, climate change is not a matter for political debate, but a reality.

Around 7,000 people call the Strait home, and they are already exposed to the impacts of climate variability. There are king tides, flooding, and unpredictable weather patterns that impede their everyday lives. In 2012, extreme weather damaged the local graveyard on Saibai island.

This raises important ethical and political issues for Australia. As a nation we must engage with the harmful cultural implications of climate damage.

Australia’s forgotten people

At the northern tip of Australia, the Strait finds itself not quite excised, like other Australian territories scattered off the mainland such as Norfolk and Christmas islands.

Still, the islands are certainly invisible in political decision-making and in public concern. When I visited the region in 2013, I was told time and again by locals that they felt like Australia’s “forgotten people”.

According to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, indigenous peoples worldwide contribute the least to human-induced climate change, yet are among the most vulnerable to its effects…….https://theconversation.com/rising-seas-pose-a-cultural-threat-to-australias-forgotten-people-34359

November 28, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming