In mid-October, 30 climate activists from 12 Pacific Island nations paddled traditional canoes into the sea and, joined by scores of supporters in kayaks and on surfboards, slowed the passage of eight coal transport ships attempting to leave a port in Newcastle, Australia.
The blockade lasted nine hours, photos and videos of the action went viral.
The activists hailed from a range of island states including Fiji, Papua New Guinea (PNG), the Solomon Islands and Samoa, countries where the effects of a hotter climate are evident on a daily basis.
Coastline erosion, sea-level rise, floods, storms, relocation of coastal communities, contamination of freshwater sources and destruction of crops and agricultural lands are several hardships facing some 10 million Pacific Islanders, more than 50 percent of whom reside within a mile of the coastline.
For these populations, the fossil fuel industry poses a grave threat.
Coal production is responsible for 44 percent of global CO2 emissions worldwide, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. Australia is the fifth-largest coal producing country in the world after China, the United States, India and Indonesia.
When the activists chose Australia as the protest site, it was to urge Australian residents to support Pacific Islanders in their stance against the fossil fuel industry.
Arianne Kassman, a climate activist from PNG, said, “The expansion of the fossil-fuel industry means the destruction of the whole of the Pacific.”
Kassman added, “The impact of climate change is something that we see every day back home. While people read about it and hear about it and watch videos, we see how much the sea level has risen.”.
Logoitala Monise from Tuvalu, a low-lying Polynesian island state halfway between Australia and Hawaii, said that her home is plagued by such climate-related impacts as King tides [a term used to describe very high tides], coastal erosion and drought, the last a previously unknown concept to most Tuvaluans.
In 2011, a state of emergency was called because the islands had not received rain for six months. Monise said rainwater was the only source of relief: It was used to drink, wash and raise animals. The increasing frequency of drought has caused the loss of livestock and plants and major disease outbreaks in Tuvalu.
All these things, she said, were the direct result of climate change.
Elsewhere in the Pacific, changing weather patterns wreak havoc on an ancient way of life, splitting families apart as some members are forced to migrate overseas. The world’s first “climate change refugee” claimant was a national of Kiribati, who claimed his home was “sinking.” He was denied asylum in New Zealand.
Some activists confronted entrenched support of the fossil-fuel industry when they traveled to Maules Creek, in New South Wales, home to a $767 million open-cut coal mine.
Activists representing Maules Creek say the mine is located in Leard Forest, an almost 2,000-acre “biodiversity hotspot.”
But coal is Australia’s second largest export earner and, according to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the mine will produce 5.5 million tons of coking coal a year and add $30 million to the local economy.
“Coal is essential for the prosperity of Australia. Coal is essential for the prosperity of the world. Energy is what sustains prosperity, and coal is the world’s principle energy source and it will be for decades to come,” Abbott said.
According to Julie Macken, with Greenpeace Australia, “What will ultimately have an effect is when there’s a chorus of voices from the low-lying Pacific nations, when there is a chorus of voices from the global financial community stating that coal is in structural decline and when the international community … commit to take strong action against climate change.”
Macken said this needs to happen in the next decade, otherwise the future for young people like her 20-year-old daughter is “cooked.”
Climate activist Kassman said that 90 percent of the people who live in PNG’s rural areas do not have access to education and while they are aware of rising sea levels, eroding coastlines and changing food crops, residents don’t understand why the changes are happening.
At an event a week before the canoe action, Mikaele Maiava, from the South Pacific island nation of Tokelau, said that the global community should join together to fight the production and export of fossil fuels.
“We are divided by the oceans, by the air, but we are standing on the same land and the same mother earth,” said Maiava.