Speaker 1: Slow.
Speaker 2: United Airlines Flight one five four starts to Honolulu. When
Speaker 2: it leaves, it carries not only a full load of passages,
Speaker 2: but also a mechanic and spare parts for the plane.
Speaker 2: On its journey, it stops in the Marshall Islands at
Speaker 2: Marjora and Quadulin before heading west to make three stops
Speaker 2: in Micronesia, and finally it stops in Guan. The next day,
Speaker 2: it turns around does the same route in a reverse
Speaker 2: landing in Majorro you can see the ocean on both
Speaker 2: sides of the plane. In fact, you can see the
Speaker 2: ocean on both sides of the plane from a disturbingly
Speaker 2: low height, and despite this being one of the larger
Speaker 2: islands in the Marshall Islands, it almost looks like the
Speaker 2: plane won't fit on it without a wingtip overhanging the lagoon.
Speaker 2: The plane does fit, of course, and there's even room
Speaker 2: left at Major Airport for the best airport bar that
Speaker 2: I've ever seen. But even after a couple of hours
Speaker 2: in the company of the island's finest whiskey collection, it's
Speaker 2: very clear that the Marshall Islands are in a great
Speaker 2: deal of danger when it comes to rising sea levels.
Speaker 2: The Marshall Islands don't have much land to begin with,
Speaker 2: and through no fault of their own, their island paradise
Speaker 2: is being gradually lost to the ocean. Start with, I
Speaker 2: want to let Kathy Gentle Kitchener, the poet who he
Speaker 2: heard from yesterday, outline the scale of the threat.
Speaker 3: Climate change is a challenge that few want to take on,
Speaker 3: but the price of inaction is so high. Those of
Speaker 3: us from Oceania are already experiencing it firsthand. We've seen
Speaker 3: waves crashing into our homes and our bread fruit trees
Speaker 3: wither from the salt and drought. We look at our
Speaker 3: children and wonder how they will know themselves or their
Speaker 3: culture should we lose our islands. Climate change affects not
Speaker 3: only US islanders, it threatens the entire world. To tackle it,
Speaker 3: we need a radical change. Of course, this isn't easy.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: It means ending carbon pollution within my lifetime. It means
Speaker 3: supporting those of us most affected to prepare for unavoidable
Speaker 3: climate impacts, and it means taking responsibility for irreversible loss
Speaker 3: and damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The people who
Speaker 3: support this movement are indigenous mothers like me, families like
Speaker 3: mine and millions more standing up for the changes needed
Speaker 3: and working to make them happen. I ask world leaders
Speaker 3: to take us all along on your ride. We won't
Speaker 3: slow you down, will help you win the most important
Speaker 3: race of all, the race to save humanity.
Speaker 2: Currently, Pacific island nations are responsible for less than zero
Speaker 2: points zero three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but
Speaker 2: the United Elations estimates that more than fifty thousand people
Speaker 2: in the Pacific displaced every year, many of them by
Speaker 2: climate change. Of course, people leave for other reasons. Perhaps
Speaker 2: they're looking for work, which can be hard to find
Speaker 2: on a small land, or perhaps they won the uptunities
Speaker 2: at the United States life offers. Thanks to their Compact
Speaker 2: of Free Association, Marshalise people can live and work in
Speaker 2: the USA without a visa. Most Marshallyse people who do
Speaker 2: leave the islands move to Springdale, Arkansas. It's where the
Speaker 2: largest off island Marshallese community is gathered, and they tend
Speaker 2: to cluster around the reliable jobs offered by the Tyson
Speaker 2: Chicken Factory. In twenty twenty, the Tyson Chicken Factory remained
Speaker 2: open during lockdowns, and people who had left the islands
Speaker 2: for a more steady income and a better chance for
Speaker 2: a stable future, suddenly face more great risks at work.
Speaker 2: Life is by no means easy for marshal Ease people,
Speaker 2: both in the US and at home, and the choices
Speaker 2: they face because of climate change constricting global economy and
Speaker 2: the United States refusing to pay its fair share of
Speaker 2: compensation don't make that any easier. On my last night
Speaker 2: in the Marshall Islands, I was having a beer in
Speaker 2: a bar and chatting with a local journalist. I asked
Speaker 2: him what I should write. He said that I needed
Speaker 2: to tell you that people in the RMI aren't moving
Speaker 2: because they're afraid of waves. We're not afraid of the ocean,
Speaker 2: he said. We're ocean people. We go in the ocean
Speaker 2: every day. He was right, of course. The drivers of
Speaker 2: migration are complicated, and they always have been. I always
Speaker 2: tell people who ask me what I cover that they
Speaker 2: cover climate and conflict and migration, because in fact they're
Speaker 2: largely the same things. There are many reasons for migrating
Speaker 2: from the Marshall Islands. If there are people who have left,
Speaker 2: and all of them are valid, But everyone I spoke to,
Speaker 2: whether they'd left or come back or stayed there their
Speaker 2: whole lives were pretty clear that nobody wants the community
Speaker 2: to leave. The people of the Marshall Islands love their
Speaker 2: islands and they want to raise their children and grandchildren
Speaker 2: on their ancestral land. But the people making the choices
Speaker 2: that impact their ability to do that are a long
Speaker 2: way from the lagoon that's creeping closer and closer to
Speaker 2: the houses around Magro at all. Climate change making the
Speaker 2: islands uninhabitable doesn't necessarily mean they'll be swallowed entirely by
Speaker 2: the ocean long before the last scrap of land disappears.
Speaker 2: The rising saltwater will kill bread fruit trees, and flooding
Speaker 2: will destroy homes. To get a center of that threat,
Speaker 2: we spoke to a meteorologist.
Speaker 5: I'm regally white, Regional White, and I'm the meteorologist in church.
Speaker 2: Here ready explained what climate change might do to make
Speaker 2: the islands less easy to live on and eventually perhaps
Speaker 2: impossible to live on. If something doesn't change, it's hard
Speaker 2: for people to see these kind of creeping changes. When
Speaker 2: we think about climate change rendering an island uninhabitable, we
Speaker 2: think about that island ceasing to exist, or the house
Speaker 2: is being swept away. By a storm searge or a
Speaker 2: massive king tide perhaps, but in fact the changes are
Speaker 2: more gradual, but no less destructive.
Speaker 5: We have to go back to the imagion scenarios that
Speaker 5: IP is produced, and based on them, worst case scenario,
Speaker 5: if we look at it, I have to open up
Speaker 5: the computer and look at the table. But in one
Speaker 5: hundred years we may be not complete listening, and that's
Speaker 5: not what's important here. What is important is that lens.
Speaker 6: Will be uninevitable way before they sink, because we will
Speaker 6: not be able to drive on the road. We will
Speaker 6: not be able to rely on our water lenses because
Speaker 6: they'll all have salt water into them. As more and
Speaker 6: more frequent salt water introgs and get on top and
Speaker 6: down into the water lens, they will be undrinkable.
Speaker 5: So at what stage can we put that target. I'm
Speaker 5: not comfortable at this moment to point that out, but
Speaker 5: I think anyone of us can look at the numbers
Speaker 5: and decide, based on this emission scenario, this is the day.
Speaker 5: Based on that the mission scenario, that is the day.
Speaker 5: So there's not a set day or a what do
Speaker 5: you call it the hair that broke the camel's back?
Speaker 5: What was it. What was the American saying?
Speaker 2: As Reggie explained, the impact of rising sea levels is
Speaker 2: already being seen, particularly in the case of flooding.
Speaker 5: Oh, there are many but in a low lying at all,
Speaker 5: your most concerned is flooding, coastal flooding. So we've seen
Speaker 5: more frequent flooding during Landinia. Laninea is the face where
Speaker 5: in the Marshall Islands specifically, you get elevated sea levels
Speaker 5: about ten centimeters or so eight to twelve inches on
Speaker 5: top of the normal sea level at any given time.
Speaker 5: So when there is a storm search king tide, those
Speaker 5: things compound on one another to give us more frequent
Speaker 5: coastal floodings in the low lying areas. If you go
Speaker 5: in the bag of Measuro, you will see people building
Speaker 5: up sea walls to protect their properties. With those sea
Speaker 5: walls the impact has been lessened a bit, but without
Speaker 5: those sea walls, nuisance flooding has been almost a monthly
Speaker 5: occurrence during Alminium phases.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, the World Bank and the Marshalleasee
Speaker 2: government produced a report which allowed visualization of the impact
Speaker 2: of climate change on each building in Marjuro in broad strokes.
Speaker 2: The report stated that quote, rising sea levels and the
Speaker 2: atoll nation of the Marshall Islands are projected to endanger
Speaker 2: forty percent of existing buildings in the capitol Marjoro, with
Speaker 2: ninety six percent of the city at risk for frequent
Speaker 2: flooding introduced by climate change. According to a World Bank study,
Speaker 2: change seems to be very hard for the corporations and
Speaker 2: governments most responsible for it. Indeed, one could argue that
Speaker 2: seeing that change is hard because of those corporations and governments.
Speaker 2: Namia Rescuers, a Harvard historian of science, studies the propaganda
Speaker 2: that has allowed major corporations to deny the damage they
Speaker 2: do to the planet and generate massive profits by not
Speaker 2: paying for the negative externalities of their actions. Negative externalities,
Speaker 2: if you're not familiar, are the costs that their business
Speaker 2: imposes on other people but they don't pay. In her
Speaker 2: book Merchants of Doubt, Arescus traces how nuclear testing did
Speaker 2: huge damage to the ozone layer. Indeed, much of the
Speaker 2: technology we used today to track global climate change was
Speaker 2: developed using government money. Part of the reason why was
Speaker 2: to assess with the Soviet Union was doing nuclear testing
Speaker 2: by tracking the environmental damage that was done using some
Speaker 2: of the data these instruments created, scientists, among them Carl Sagan,
Speaker 2: began to discuss the possibility of a nuclear winter and
Speaker 2: the fact that any use of nuclear weapons, or even
Speaker 2: a nuclear accident, could put the future of all humanity
Speaker 2: at risk. Unsurprisingly, as huge public relations effort spun up
Speaker 2: to dismiss the idea of nuclear winter and attack the
Speaker 2: concept of nuclear war being an unwinnable proposition. There was,
Speaker 2: after all, a huge amount of money at stick. In
Speaker 2: an excellent New York CARESSI on the subject, Jill Lapour,
Speaker 2: another Harvard historian, outlines a campaign to discredit those scientists
Speaker 2: and their claims. In nineteen eighty four, in an effort
Speaker 2: to count to Carl Sagan and to defend what was
Speaker 2: called the Strategic Defense Initiative, the George C. Marshall Institute
Speaker 2: was founded by Robert Jastro, a NASA physicist, Frederick Seitz,
Speaker 2: a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, and
Speaker 2: William Nieremberg, a past director at Script's Institute of Oceanography
Speaker 2: Right here where I live in San Diego. The Marshall
Speaker 2: Institute began trying to get PBS to not air documentaries
Speaker 2: opposing the strategic defense initiative, the so called star Wars
Speaker 2: program wouldn't be of any use of a single nuclear
Speaker 2: incident could trigger devastating change in the global climate. Another
Speaker 2: Master Institute scientist, Seltz's cousin, Russell, who was a physicist
Speaker 2: at Harvard Center for International Affairs, published an essay in
Speaker 2: the National Interest in the fall of nineteen eighty six
Speaker 2: dismissing the idea of nuclear winter and saying it was
Speaker 2: nothing but a series of long conjectures. He described the
Speaker 2: nuclear winter theory as dead course of death, notorious lack
Speaker 2: of scientific integrity. By nineteen eighty eight, the Institute of
Speaker 2: pivoty and It began publishing the first of many papers
Speaker 2: on climate change. Other scientists there, including Fred Singer, challenged
Speaker 2: the model that predicted a nuclear winter. They've gone on
Speaker 2: to do the same with climate change, claiming that in
Speaker 2: both cases it was far from certain that catastrophic consequences
Speaker 2: would occur. Singer incidentally was a consultant for Arco exon
Speaker 2: shell oil and sol oil. He died in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: after serving for years as a director of Science and
Speaker 2: environment policy at the Heartland Institute, which was founded in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four. Its position on global warming at the
Speaker 2: time was quote, most scientists do not believe human greenhouse
Speaker 2: gas emissions are a proven threat to the environment or
Speaker 2: human well being, despite a barrage of propaganda insisting otherwise
Speaker 2: coming from the environmental movement and echoed by its sickophants
Speaker 2: in the mainstream media. In the Marshall Islands, this kind
Speaker 2: of de nihilism, no matter how well funded and qualified,
Speaker 2: really isn't going to stick. Everyone here is personally seen
Speaker 2: the impacts of rising sea levels eroding away on their
Speaker 2: precious land. But it's the actions of people everywhere can
Speaker 2: impact people here, so they have to persuade the rest
Speaker 2: of the world to care about them.
Speaker 5: I will bet that every Marshal Marshalise understand impacts because
Speaker 5: every Marshalise has been a victim of some coastal inandvision
Speaker 5: has been you know, has been impacted by those, so
Speaker 5: they understand.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 5: The youngest ones maybe they experienced there first, but the
Speaker 5: older ones they've been around during those days when the
Speaker 5: you know, coastal flooding wasn't an issue.
Speaker 2: One of the things I like to do in my
Speaker 2: free time is to freedom Sometimes I can collect sea
Speaker 2: urchins or cools, but lots of the time I just
Speaker 2: like to be underwater. I've never done scuba diving. All
Speaker 2: the gear and equipment kind of scares me, but holding
Speaker 2: my breath and swimming around the reef is probably the
Speaker 2: closest thing I'll ever feel to flying. To be able
Speaker 2: to hold your breath for a minute or two underwater,
Speaker 2: you need to get your heart rate very low, and
Speaker 2: this means being very calm, letting tension and stress float away.
Speaker 2: It's a magical feeling, and one that I've tapped into
Speaker 2: even outside the water. In stressful situations. Sometimes that ability
Speaker 2: to calm yourself could be a bit too effective. I
Speaker 2: remember once starting to walk off a broken pelvis and
Speaker 2: passing out from blood loss later. Sometimes that calm focus, though,
Speaker 2: can be exactly what you need, like when you're holding
Speaker 2: your breath on the bottom of the ocean and you
Speaker 2: realize that you got your fins tangled and an abandoned
Speaker 2: fishing line and you need to cut it so you
Speaker 2: can get back to the surface and breathe. I saw
Speaker 2: that same ability to remain calm and even happy despite
Speaker 2: what seems like another impending crisis every time I spoke
Speaker 2: to Marshally's people about climate change between their nuclear past
Speaker 2: and their perilous future. The Marshallese people have every right
Speaker 2: to be angry, and maybe they are angry when they're
Speaker 2: not told them to British journalists. But whenever I ask people,
Speaker 2: they still seem hopeful, upbeat and excited about the future
Speaker 2: of their country. As we're going to see tomorrow, marshal Lease,
Speaker 2: people are still very much investing in their shared future.
Speaker 2: I think that's something we can all learn from. Resilience
Speaker 2: to the Marshallese community, even in the face of what
Speaker 2: seems like a second apocalyptic threat. He's Reggie discussing how
Speaker 2: climate change makes him feel well.
Speaker 5: I try not to dwell on what could happen. I
Speaker 5: could try to think of what we could do now
Speaker 5: to change people's heart, to change how we behave how
Speaker 5: we treat the world. I mean, it's our only home.
Speaker 5: You go out in space and look back. It's one
Speaker 5: lonely place in an entire galaxy of stars and whatever.
Speaker 5: You But when you look at it that way, you
Speaker 5: begin to realize I must respect my police. Who else
Speaker 5: will respect? The divide.
Speaker 2: It's worth noting that some people we talk to are
Speaker 2: less concerned about climate change.
Speaker 4: My name is Juliet Maranda from Mussel Island. I live
Speaker 4: on Takhan.
Speaker 2: Juliet's an older resident of wrong Rum, one of the
Speaker 2: outer islands on madro At all her life there is
Speaker 2: in many senses adyllic. Her cook house is built around
Speaker 2: a large bread fruit tree. The tree also serves as
Speaker 2: a work service. It's like a solar punk vision of
Speaker 2: the future where we live in harmony with nature. But
Speaker 2: for her it's just a place she makes lunch along
Speaker 2: with the other wrong Wrung islanders. She served a visiting
Speaker 2: group that I was part of, a delicious lunch of
Speaker 2: coconut breadfruit, pandanas, crabs and rice, where we talked about
Speaker 2: what brought her back to the Marshall Islands after thirty
Speaker 2: years living in the United States.
Speaker 4: Well, so though you always are own sick when I'm
Speaker 4: in USA, I miss my you know, war around freedom
Speaker 4: like USA, not go to next door, be goes, you know,
Speaker 4: trust passing, But around here you do everything. Yes, it's
Speaker 4: it's different, lots different. So I love a the USA.
Speaker 4: Tell liber is good and a lot of different things
Speaker 4: you as do then modules so I love it here.
Speaker 4: I do all my old thing I usually do, breaking
Speaker 4: and make my home chicken and chewing in and on pigeon.
Speaker 4: Shanna Barbara, you have to get a guy to go
Speaker 4: to the peach over year recruiting Peachie.
Speaker 2: She clearly loves her little piece of paradise, and it's
Speaker 2: easy to see why she was happy to share it
Speaker 2: with us, as were all the islands on Wrong Room,
Speaker 2: I short walk away from her house. Her neighbor's children
Speaker 2: played in the sand with their pigs, chickens and dogs,
Speaker 2: and it's certainly a very different place from Santa Barbara. Well,
Speaker 2: she spent much of her time in States, but it's
Speaker 2: no less special. Like many Marshal Leaves, she has a
Speaker 2: very strong faith, and that faith is helping her explain
Speaker 2: why climate change is happening. Do you think it's because
Speaker 2: their sea levels rising? You think it's gonna make it
Speaker 2: harder for people to.
Speaker 8: Live in Some people do that, but I don't believe it.
Speaker 4: Only God will do it. I believe in God. When
Speaker 4: they do the weather and said it's going to rain tomorrow,
Speaker 4: and tomorrow is not going to be rain, God's going
Speaker 4: to make it rain. The nost no, you know it,
Speaker 4: you're for others.
Speaker 2: The threat is already here. Here's one conversation with Monique
Speaker 2: and Francine from Core and Akarmi, a local NGO who
Speaker 2: you'll hear a lot about tomorrow. They're doing incredible work
Speaker 2: investing in the future of the Marshall Islands by installing
Speaker 2: water filters and smokeless stoves and homes across the nation.
Speaker 2: You might never have had to worry about clean water
Speaker 2: or never been concerned that cooking your food might hurt
Speaker 2: your lungs, but both of those things are massive public
Speaker 2: health issues if we don't have access to electricity, gas
Speaker 2: and clean water from a pipe that comes into your home.
Speaker 2: One night before dinner, we talked to them about climate change.
Speaker 9: The scientists are saying that you've got so many years
Speaker 9: until all eyes melts and affects us. We don't have
Speaker 9: mountains to run to. In some places they can just
Speaker 9: runt of the mountains.
Speaker 6: We don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's Marshall Islands too.
Speaker 9: Well, we're at the front clives. So you're also blessed
Speaker 9: that you get to see the Marshall Islands. Yeah, and
Speaker 9: really well, really see firsthand what the plastic.
Speaker 2: The impact goes beyond the individual though. When we heard
Speaker 2: from the Ministry of Health and the impact the climate
Speaker 2: change is already having on the well being of Marshallys people.
Speaker 2: They reminded us of both the physical and mental health
Speaker 2: of residents has been affected.
Speaker 7: So we are well uh, as active secretary said, my
Speaker 7: name is Nathan Carbon Climate Change and amn.
Speaker 10: Uh. Well, first of all, we'll come to our very
Speaker 10: wonderful here to visit us. I think Michael and Jackson
Speaker 10: said I best. Do you want to see change in
Speaker 10: the world, you have to look in the mirror. And
Speaker 10: so this is our climate Change of Health.
Speaker 11: To frontment uh uh.
Speaker 12: Climate impacts on health and well being.
Speaker 2: Nathan went on to explain what that means both in
Speaker 2: terms of mental health and in physical health as mosquitoes
Speaker 2: and other disease vectors adapt to the changing climate and
Speaker 2: rising sea levels.
Speaker 12: I communicable diseases and x CDs, reducing vulnerabilities with the
Speaker 12: vector borne diseases and then improving mental health resilience.
Speaker 13: So the mental health resilience is a really key thing.
Speaker 10: We have our seminar that's ongoing right now partnership with.
Speaker 12: Jojibu, which lets the youth express how climate change based
Speaker 12: their field.
Speaker 6: And also.
Speaker 13: In h involving the community and getting their feedback. You know,
Speaker 13: the climate issue is not just at a national level,
Speaker 13: it's mostly at the community level.
Speaker 2: All of these changes are hard to predict, but it's
Speaker 2: easy to see the impact climate change has already had.
Speaker 2: We spoke to the island's Environmental Protection Agency to get
Speaker 2: a sense of what that meant.
Speaker 1: My name is Marianna Phillip and I'm the general manager here.
Speaker 1: As you can see, we're a very small organization with
Speaker 1: a very broad mandate anything environmental related. We are accountable too,
Speaker 1: and we're supposed to provide advice to the government and
Speaker 1: the Marshal Lease people about new issues that are coming up.
Speaker 6: And so.
Speaker 1: You know, we're easily overwhelmed and outmatched. And then you know,
Speaker 1: you throwing climate change into the mix, and suddenly I
Speaker 1: can't even imagine what the change is going to be
Speaker 1: like in the next five years or ten years. It's
Speaker 1: hard for me to imagine. When I was a child,
Speaker 1: I used to go to the school over across the
Speaker 1: street is a DS is a public school, and we
Speaker 1: would cross the road and swim from here all the
Speaker 1: way to develop and then cross the road and go home.
Speaker 1: This was all white Sandy Beach you know, obviously that's
Speaker 1: not the case anymore.
Speaker 2: One way that the Marshal Lease community has responded to
Speaker 2: climate change is to take a position of leadership on
Speaker 2: mitigating carbon emissions. We heard about this all over the island,
Speaker 2: with solutions ranging from electric canoes to sailboats to a
Speaker 2: grid that runs on renewable energy. They've also taken leadership
Speaker 2: and how aid money is spent, rather than just accepting
Speaker 2: the projects has fund to suggest him. The RMI has
Speaker 2: been vocal in making sure that unique challenges that they
Speaker 2: face are reflected with unique solutions that they propose. For example,
Speaker 2: they simply don't have the space for larger solar farms,
Speaker 2: even though they do have the funding.
Speaker 14: My name is Angeline Heini Rammers. Other than being part
Speaker 14: of PO, I'm also the director for the National Energy Office.
Speaker 14: And then i'd like to introduce you to Ben. He's
Speaker 14: the deputy director. So we're a very small office. It's
Speaker 14: newly created. It was developed in twenty eighteen, so we're
Speaker 14: trying to be creative and we partnered with our local
Speaker 14: government in exchange building them basketball courts. The reason why
Speaker 14: there's so many basketball courts is that we'll be installing
Speaker 14: rooftop and on the rooftop thats we're going to be
Speaker 14: housing the solar connecting it to the grid. And it's
Speaker 14: with this project we had. It took us I think
Speaker 14: more than a year, Ben right, so went back and
Speaker 14: forth with our partner because they just wanted to go
Speaker 14: ahead and put on solver.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the scared of the programs larger countries use simply
Speaker 2: isn't a good fit for the Marshalis.
Speaker 14: We get funding to go on trips to places like Korea, Japan,
Speaker 14: Okinawa to see all these systems that in the eyes
Speaker 14: of big countries that you see as islands like Jju
Speaker 14: Island and Korea, but they're like so advanced compared to here.
Speaker 14: You go there and they have ocean thermal and to us,
Speaker 14: where like, okay, what about our corals that's where our
Speaker 14: reefish lives in. Do we have to get rid of
Speaker 14: our corals? Maybe we should rethink of that or.
Speaker 2: They also make sure to incorporate traditional methods and their
Speaker 2: culture along with mboderant solutions. More about the electric canoes
Speaker 2: that they had it, they're very pretty cool and I'm
Speaker 2: interested to know, like a well, Jeremy, I really liked
Speaker 2: that you were incorporating in the traditional ways. Why it's
Speaker 2: ignoring the trying because that's something that the electric canoe is,
Speaker 2: that's something that.
Speaker 1: Was framed up here at the wham And can.
Speaker 2: You talk about how surface convention, how much.
Speaker 4: Fun it might save.
Speaker 14: Then do you want to start with that? We came
Speaker 14: up with the idea for the and and then where
Speaker 14: we are at.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So WOM started the initiative of the boat building
Speaker 11: and they wanted to it strictly started with wamb We
Speaker 11: We had no idea about the project. But initially they
Speaker 11: got a project from a donor for boat building where
Speaker 11: they would modernize these traditional canoes just to make modifications
Speaker 11: to make the hull bigger for catching fish or just whynot.
Speaker 11: And then out of the blue, the director for WHOM said, hey,
Speaker 11: what if we put solar on this boat.
Speaker 5: I think there's something in the market.
Speaker 11: So we just out of the blue just wanted to
Speaker 11: test it. Unfortunately, when we purchased the motor and they're
Speaker 11: going to start the testing, wound burned down and the
Speaker 11: motor burned down with it. But they did a few
Speaker 11: runs in the lagoon with it and it was really awesome.
Speaker 11: I wrote on it at one point they started using
Speaker 11: wind in the wind died down, turned on the motor
Speaker 11: and they started using the motor, and then one pick
Speaker 11: up they turned.
Speaker 6: Off the motor.
Speaker 11: It was really awesome, but we Anio the director, wanted
Speaker 11: to procure another one, so we procured another one with
Speaker 11: our own funds. So it's on its way and should
Speaker 11: be here very shortly do some real testing, but we
Speaker 11: wanted we also partnered with Wanem because of that just
Speaker 11: pilot project, we saw the need to build more of
Speaker 11: the similar kind canoe, so we asked another donor if
Speaker 11: we can use their funding to fund the second phase
Speaker 11: of that project. So right now they've been approved and
Speaker 11: they're building an additional eighteen more canoes for each each island.
Speaker 11: And so the process is they're bringing these boat builders
Speaker 11: from the outer islands, they train them how they build
Speaker 11: these new style canoes with modern technology, and then they
Speaker 11: ship it back out. One success story without the motor
Speaker 11: is in the atoll of likyp They completely stop using
Speaker 11: their motorized boat because they're one hundred percent using the
Speaker 11: canoe and the canoe can carry up to a ton,
Speaker 11: So they've been carrying copra from one island to another
Speaker 11: back and forth with the canoe and they said they
Speaker 11: save so much money that they decided to do a
Speaker 11: fishing tournament at their outer island from the.
Speaker 1: Money they save.
Speaker 11: You.
Speaker 2: He's ready talking about how he sees his role in
Speaker 2: combating climate change.
Speaker 5: Oh, I don't enjoy being helpless. I don't believe that
Speaker 5: the impacts of others, should you know, impact me. I
Speaker 5: make the changes where I can. I try to behave
Speaker 5: in a manner that is not detrimental to the earth.
Speaker 5: And I preached that to my kids and hopefully the
Speaker 5: compounding effect or you know it will grow exponentially from
Speaker 5: them to other ambassadors to spread the word that, you know,
Speaker 5: we need to do something. It's not about politics, and
Speaker 5: it's about you know, the your overhead or how much
Speaker 5: profit you gain at the end of the days, about
Speaker 5: how you gained those by you know, being a good
Speaker 5: ambageltor to preserving the earth and the climate, you know,
Speaker 5: all the all the other inhabitants, not just humans.
Speaker 2: Wherever we went in the Republic of the Marshall Islands,
Speaker 2: it was hard to find dooming gloom with regards to
Speaker 2: climate change. What we found everywhere was people adapting and
Speaker 2: making changes, both the kind of changes that reduce their
Speaker 2: carbon emissions and the kind that made their homes more
Speaker 2: defensible because the rest of the world is not making
Speaker 2: that first kind of changes. Resilience doesn't just mean sea
Speaker 2: walls and houses on stilts that can withstand flood are
Speaker 2: those those are important. It also means making hard choices
Speaker 2: and forming strong communities. Here's Mariana again.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of attention on us as like frontline countries,
Speaker 1: you know, in the face of climate change, and we
Speaker 1: get all the reporters come in asking us questions. We
Speaker 1: get a lot of consultants that come in and out
Speaker 1: and collect data.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 1: Of course we're seen as sort of the sad countries
Speaker 1: that will eventually face the reality of having no land
Speaker 1: to live on.
Speaker 5: Right so.
Speaker 1: Forced relocation, displacement. I don't want to say migration, because
Speaker 1: that's not exactly a migration. If you have to leave,
Speaker 1: you're you're being you're being displaced. Our concern is that.
Speaker 8: We're not we don't have all the capabilities in the
Speaker 8: science at our fingertip to help inform the government or
Speaker 8: you know, everyone.
Speaker 1: Interested donors about how much is changing, how much is
Speaker 1: going to change, and especially how that change is going
Speaker 1: to change us, you know. We it's it's overwhelming. We
Speaker 1: we have a national adaptation plan. I hope that you
Speaker 1: will get into that when you get the chance to
Speaker 1: h that's the survival plan. In that survival plan, there
Speaker 1: is you know, there is very scary reality that we
Speaker 1: may need to take down some islands to elevate some islands,
Speaker 1: you know, and every island have their land owners and
Speaker 1: what happens to those people. Marshals are connected to their
Speaker 1: land so much culturally, and so how do we adapt
Speaker 1: to that change when it comes so quickly? That's scary.
Speaker 2: Everywhere you go in the Marshal isings you see the
Speaker 2: impact of climate change and rising sea levels, but you
Speaker 2: also see the community responding and supporting itself through the
Speaker 2: existential threat. The RMI isn't a sad place, quite the opposite.
Speaker 2: It's a tremendously happy and beautiful place. And I had
Speaker 2: one of the most enjoyable weeks I can remember there.
Speaker 2: I'd go back in a heartbeat. But the joy with
Speaker 2: which people approach every day doesn't mean they aren't concerned,
Speaker 2: and it certainly doesn't mean they're not worthy of our concern. Tomorrow,
Speaker 2: we're going to discuss how the people of the Republic
Speaker 2: of Marshal Lions, and in particular the women of the
Speaker 2: Republic of Marshall Lions, and making sure that Marshali's people
Speaker 2: have a safe and healthy future.
Speaker 4: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 4: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 4: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 4: coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.