Seeking Safety from the Storm: The Impact of Climate Change on Inter-Island Relations and Human Migration in Micronesia

• Main Author: RUBINSTEIN Donald
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 鹿児島大学
• Subjects: 451; High Island; Pacific; Low Island
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10232/10343; https://ir.kagoshima-u.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=12655; https://ir.kagoshima-u.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=12655&item_no=1&attribute_id=16&file_no=1

Pacific Islanders are well aware of the intimate relationship between climate change and people’s life within island environments. For many Micronesian islanders, especially those living on coral atolls only one or two meters above sea level, cultural adaptations to climate changes such as droughts, typhoons, and changes in sea level have been necessary for survival from the earliest times of settlement, over a thousand years ago. One important strategy for cultural adaptation to climate change in Micronesia has involved the ability of small island communities to draw together through larger inter-island relationships of mutual assistance. Because low coral islands are especially vulnerable to these sudden or gradual changes in climate, throughout Micronesia low island communities have developed inter-island networks among themselves, and special political linkages to neighboring high volcanic islands that are less vulnerable and can provide emergency refuge and assistance after devastating storms or floods on the small coral islands. Within Micronesia, Yap and the Outer Islands have developed the most extensive network of inter-island relations between a high island complex and a group of far-flung low coral islands. Lying along the track of the most frequent and destructive typhoons of the western Pacific, the Yap Outer Islands have always been the most vulnerable islands in Micronesia to storm damage and to the impact of climate change. Centuries ago the “YapeseEmpire” developed, linking all the Outer Islands under the authority of one high-ranking group of villages on the main high island complex of Yap. Traditionally the Outer Islanders have paid tribute to their Yapese chiefs, and relied upon the Yapese for protection and assistance after storms. In very recent years a unique new phenomenon has been occurring, as Outer Islanders, using their traditional linkages to Yapese chiefs, are establishing stable migrant settlements in various parts of Yap. Within the past five years, three major new settlements ...