News: Kiribati and Tuvalu Will Drown Without Global Climate Action

(The Ecologist) November 11, 2010 – The causes of climate change are far from their shores, but these tiny Pacific nations face growing social strife and eventual annihilation unless western governments wake up and take responsibility, argue Scott Leckie and Dan Lewis. Tessie Eria Lambourne’s bright smile belies a deeper sense of unease for which […]

Paper: Ecological Refugees, States Borders, and the Lockean Proviso

Cara Nine of the University College Cork recently submitted the paper “Ecological Refugees, State Borders, and the Lockean Proviso” to the Journal of Applied Philosophy. In this essay she expounds on the term “ecological refugee,” which we might better understand as environmental or climate-induced migrant. She analyzes the question: what may the people of an […]

Island Nations Frustrated at Climate Talks

(IRIN) October 5, 2009 – Up to half a million people in the Pacific will lose their homes and their countries to rising sea levels because small island nations cannot persuade the rest of the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently, campaigners say. The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is calling for a […]

"We Aren't Refugees"

(Inside Story) June 30, 2009 – For people on Kiribati and Tuvalu facing increasing climate pressures, the description “refugee” has too many negative connotations, write Jane McAdam and Maryanne Loughry. Over the past decade a new term has entered the lexicon of policy makers and the media: climate change refugees. Human movement caused by environmental […]

A Plea From the Pacific Nation of Tuvalu

Last year, I attended a “Make Poverty History” event put on by Oxfam in Sydney, Australia. During the event, I had the opportunity to meet a resident of Tuvalu, which is series of low lying coral atolls and home to about 12,000 people. Flown in all the way from her small South Pacific nation, she […]