How to Support Asian & Pacific Islander Communities and Their Homelands
Every year in May, we celebrate Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, which highlights the history, culture, and contributions of these important communities.
A rather broad term, AAPI encompasses all of the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia (New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands), Micronesia (Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, and the Federated States of Micronesia) and Polynesia (New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia, and Easter Island).
This month, we want to talk about an urgent topic that affects many people from these regions—climate change. Our family and members of our farm team are islanders ourselves, and we wholeheartedly empathize with the climate threats that island nations around the world are facing, including those in the Asian and Pacific areas.
Even though they are far from the top contributors to global greenhouse gas and carbon emissions, the island nations in the Pacific and Asia are amongst those most at risk from climate change. For these people, climate change is not a possible threat of the future. It is happening right now. Communities are already facing the devastating challenges of rising seas.
Island nations are especially vulnerable due to three main reasons. They have low-lying ocean-fronted borders, relatively small land masses, and exposure to extreme weather and climate variability. There are many small and low populated islands without adequate resources to protect their land, its biodiversity and nature, and the people living there. With high risks to human health and livelihoods, the pressure to leave the island goes hand in hand with the lack of resources needed to relocate.
As sea levels continue to rise, island peoples and their cultures are being seriously threatened. In November 2021, we saw Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe’s speech at the COP26 climate summit. In his speech, Kofe shared that the eight islands of Tuvalu were sacred to 12,000 people. “They were the home of our ancestors, they are the home of our people today, and we want them to remain the home of our people into the future,” he said.
Facing the same threats like Tuvalu, many of the island nations are warning that without global action, their land will almost certainly be submerged entirely.
During the same conference, Palau’s President Surangel Whipps, Jr. shared these concerns: “The resources of Palau, a nation of about 18,000 people, are disappearing before our eyes.”
Small islands and their resources disappear as:
Extreme weather events take place, affecting islands in both the tropics and higher latitudes.
Rising sea levels exacerbates floods, storms, erosion, and other coastal hazards. These impacts threaten vital infrastructure, settlements, and facilities that support the livelihood of island communities.
Unstable soil, beach erosion, and coral bleaching affects vital income resources such as fisheries, food production, and tourism.
Water becomes more scarce. It is projected that by mid-century, there will be reduced water sources on many small islands (such as the Caribbean and Pacific) due to climate change. The limited water resources will make life extremely challenging during low-rainfall periods.
Flora and fauna species change with the shifting climate. Non-native species will migrate to the islands and interfere with the local biodiversity.
To help those people save their homes, we need to push for policies and adopt sustainable practices that lower our daily carbon emissions.
These climate-friendly actions can look like: lowering plastic use, consuming sustainably harvested salmon and seafood, supporting producers of seaweed and kelp, limiting the use of fossil fuels, adding more plants to our diets, composting, recycling, buying less stuff and using the things we already have for longer, carrying reusable bags, water bottles, coffee mugs, and utensils everywhere we go…
Opportunities for everyone to join the climate movement exist and support others across the globe!
