Tomorrow to the Edge of the World
Tomorrow I will be heading to Kiribati (pronounced: KEEREEBUS). This is a atoll nation with a population of 110,000 i-Kiribati (natives) drifting in the pacific ocean, in the most advanced timezone in the world and very very far from anywhere. It’s nearest neighbour that most people will have heard of is Samoa which is 19 hours by plane.
A co-worker of mine said that at night you can stand on the beach under a sky full of stars and feel like you’re at the edge of the world.
The primary purpose of my trip is to gain access to their health system’s computer. This is not as nefarious as it sounds. The data inside is aggregated and anonymised - that is, privacy is not an issue - and we’re only enabling them to view their data through our visualisation and reporting software.
A secondary purpose will be to observe and interview citizens of a nation whose lands will, in the near future, no longer be inhabitable. That is, the pacific nation will be the first (but not the last) to be inundated by water as the waters rise resulting from climate change. In 2012 the Kiribati government bought up a 2200 hectare island in Fiji so that the I-Kiribati could relocated when the time came. The then president Tong has surrendered any hope saying in 2012:
“because already, it’s too late for us … And so we are the canary. ”
Already villages on the lowest lying islands are having to be relocate to the already overcrowded capital - South Tarawa and salt water is beginning to impact on their ability to grow crops and ingress in their fresh water supplies.
Even though I will only be there for 11 days I hope to find out exactly how a nation of people deal with an historical shift - at worst existential threat.
Their remoteness clearly offers no protection for the citizens of Kiribati (I-Kiribati) and it is a cruel quirk of history that many had to relocate initially because of the quite redundant British nuclear testing of the fifties. I have been to the Polygon in eastern Kazakhstan and seen the broken ground from nuclear testing but never have I visited a population that has faced off such a threat. Not only that but the Gilbert Islands of Kiribati featured heavily throughout the second world war - in the Pacific campaign - you can still see gun emplacements and the shells of tanks rusting on the beach.
To understand, intimately the three greatest threats to face mankind in the previous century. To deal with it as a nation so small as to be utterly helpless will be tragic and traumatic. Yet understanding this process is also vital. When President Tong said that “we are the canary” he may have been referring not to other Pacific Island nations but to the world as a whole - that great tectonic shifts in thinking, planning and living are needed not to avoid catastrophe but to deal with the catastrophe as it unfolds.