“It’s not warships.” That’s how Mark Brown, Prime Minister of the Cook Islands responded when asked about the National Security priorities of his country.[1] “It’s climate security. It’s economic security. It’s the well-being of our people”[2] and underpinning it all, water security is now central to the agenda of many Pacific Island states.
When we think about climate change in the Pacific, most people jump to a doomsday scenario of Nations engulfed by the rising oceans. But long before islands slip permanently into the sea, the Pacific faces a peril that presents an equally existential threat to its communities.
Water security (or lack thereof) is defined as “the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development” including protection for both humans and ecosystems from contamination, water-borne diseases and from hydrometeorological disasters such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and storms.[3]
To that end, even before the full brunt of climate change hits, Pacific Nations are already uniquely geographically vulnerable. The Pacific region has some of the lowest rates of access to quality fresh water in the world, which includes only 55% of the region’s population having access to basic drinking water, and only 30% with access to adequate hygiene and sanitation infrastructure.[4] This lack of access to drinking water is due in part, to many of the smaller islands and atolls across Polynesia and Micronesia being made of volcanic rock and limestone that feature “smaller catchments, shallow aquifers, and inadequate water storage.”[5]
In the case of Tuvalu, Tonga and Kiribati, where little surface water sources exist, communities are particularly vulnerable to rainfall variability and drought as they depend more on rainwater harvesting systems.[6]
The adverse effects of Climate Change are already being felt throughout the region with impacts on water security through the “intensifying frequency of precipitation, floods, droughts, and cyclones” that are entrenching economic struggles to adapt and damaging water infrastructure.[7] For example, unprecedented and sustained heavy rainfall over a two-week period in the Solomon Islands in 2019, “contaminated drinking water and further developed risks of mosquito and water-borne diseases.”[8]
Small Island Developing States (or more appropriately described as Large Ocean States) such as those found in the Pacific, are also particularly vulnerable to economic shocks because they are often “too small to foster diversified economies or to reap the benefits of scale, and too distant from big markets”[9] creating distinct disadvantages compared to their competitors in all but niche markets. For the Pacific, this leaves many nations heavily reliant on tourism accompanied by only a handful of commodity exports including agriculture, fishing and minerals that are sold into volatile international markets[10] and often also rely on infrastructure that is highly vulnerable to hydrometeorological hazards such as cyclones and drought.
More frequent droughts and rising sea-levels, alongside higher levels of groundwater extraction due to urbanisation and population growth is increasing the number of instances of saltwater intrusion in the Pacific region’s highly permeable coastal freshwater aquifers, [11] lowering the availability of potable water for drinking and the vital irrigation that supports subsistence agricultural livelihoods, leaving smallholder farmers particularly vulnerable.[12]
A dire example is the 2011 drought in Tuvalu where water supplies dropped to levels so low that it equated to as little as five days of their population's drinking water needs.[13] During the crisis, Tuvalu turned to desalination as a portable water alternative, however, desalination is not without climate justice implications.[14] Not only is the desalination process an expensive and energy-intensive alternative, but it also creates “air, marine, and land pollution, which can be challenging and expensive to mitigate.”[15]
And the justice implications do not end there. With the Loss and Damage fund just recently announced at COP28, and despite some adaptation efforts already underway,[16] many are questioning whether the voluntary Loss and Damage fund will be enough to fuel the enormous adaptation effort ahead, not only in the Pacific but elsewhere.[17]
Where in the past, national security was concerned with the protection of borders from invasion, some low-lying Pacific nations are now sadly looking beyond adaptation and are seeking to secure migration pathways elsewhere, such as the case of the recent Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union treaty that commits to accepting up to 280 Tuvalu nationals into the Australian Visa program each year. [18]
As the world’s largest CO2 emitters continue to drag their feet and undercommit to the drastic fall in emissions required to ensure water security in the Pacific and to retain a world where ‘1.5 to stay alive’ is still possible,[19] it begs the question, is there any amount of money that could replace the loss of the ancestral home of a nation?