Lost to the sea

THIS picturesque paradise island is drowning, soon to be swallowed up entirely by the hungry, deep blue ocean surrounding it-and SUNK.

Doomed Tuvalu and its 12,600 residents are the FIRST real victims of global warming as sea level rises.

Like the last man standing on the sinking wooden deck of the Titanic, sailor John Iakopo defiantly salutes the distant horizon and jolts his back upright as the warm debris-strewn water of the Pacific sloshes around his knees.

Across his 1920s-style seaman's hat the word Tuvalu has faded in the relentless sun that scorches the tiny spit of land we stand on.

"Listen to me," Lakopo tells us. "The good ship Tuvalu is going down. Yes sir. Surer that the sun rising over the sea in the morning."

This forgotten land and its people are the tragic proof that the world must act now to prevent another breathtaking view like this from vanishing off the face of this earth.

This Saturday you can do your bit by backing our Earth Hour Campaign. Simply switch off your lights from 8:30pm to 9:30pm - and remember the coral island of Tuvalu in the Pacific.

The fourth smallest country in the world after Vatican City, Monaco and Nauru, and one of the least populated, Tuvalu sits stranded halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand.

PICTURE THEIR FUTURE: Worried pupils of Nauti Primary

Today the island's residents are the most environmentally aware people on earth - their daily lives determined by tides and the greasy sea water that gathers around their feet every day.

The worst-case scenario? In the next decade Tuvalu, like many other islands around the Pacific, will be a distant memory on an out-dated world map.

The best-case scenario?

Tuvalu will last thirty years, but gripped by the sea and terrorised by king tides, its residents will be forced to bail into planes and lifeboats from their stranded island - and head for New Zealand as high seas refugees.

Rubble

Until then life must go on for the people of Tuvalu. The children skip to school in the spray of ocean salt that will burn their dark skin.

And fishermen, who once hauled their boats out to sea from a pristine beach, now stagger and stumble over rubble and bleached coral to their battered craft.

Tuvalu's castaway desert island beaches are largely gone, replaced by broken stones and dark, sinister-looking water that shadows the islanders every move . . . waiting.

At the entrance to Nauti Primary School in the capital Funafuti sea water bubbles up through parts of the porous coral ground on high tides forcing the children to wade through water to classes.

Nisha Tusitala, 10, is part of the last generation of schoolkids who'll grow up in Tuvalu.

HIGH TIDE: House is built on stilts but levels are rising

She said: "We see the sea threaten us everyday but I feel it is part of me.

"The teachers ask us to draw pictures to capture our feelings. I drew a turtle rescuing me from my home, taking me out to sea to a safer place."

As she runs off to play with her friends in the rain, Nisha's teacher Fulitua Leiteni sighs: "Here is the truth - there won't be time for them to have children and grandchildren.

"Imagine living on a large football field with two angry rivers on either side about to burst their banks. A precarious existence unimaginable to most in the UK.

"It is the industrialised nations that have caused the problems. This is the generation that will pay the price."

Sailor Iakopo, part of Tuvalu's 100-strong reserve Navy, shares this anger: "We hardly have any cars or electricity.

"We have the world's most insignificant carbon footprint and yet we will be the first to go, the first victims of global warming.

"This is your fault! The British, the Americans, the developed world - you sealed our fate."

Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored group of 2,000 scientists, said global warming will cause oceans to rise as much as 3 feet in the next 50 years.

And if the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica don't hold up, the swell could be higher. Tuvalu, just THREE FEET above sea level in many places, will disappear - that much is certain.

SINKING SHIP: Sailor Lakopo salutes Tuvalu

Yet its residents are intensely divided over the endgame they will face.

First are the realists: Most of them, around 3,000, have left for New Zealand under an immigration arrangement called the Pacific Access Category.

Then there are the Christians - they believe that God will save the island from the floods.

Standing up to her ankles in sea water on the steps of her office, Meteorological officer Hilia Vavae explains how Christianity has gripped the islanders like a fever.

"The locals reckon the rainbow is a symbol of God's promise not the flood them," she explains. "Many have vowed to stay until the end, convinced God will divert the waters."

But as a dramatic cloudburst of rain opens up over Tuvalu, there is no sign of the rainbow.

Protection

The only sound in the air is the floating chorus of hymns coming from a local church hall. Outside, Polau Falaima, 11, skips stones in the water.

"We lost our first home to the sea," she tells me. "My father says we will move again but we will be safe because God will protect us with his rainbow in the sky.

"I read about Noah at school and how God protected his own. That will happen again to us."

Dan McDougall has been nominated for two prestigious awards in UK journalism for his work for the News of the World and other publications.

He's up for Journalist of the Year and Foreign Reporter of the Year. The British Press Awards are on March 31.

This article has 7 comments