Anote Tong is the President of Kiribati, a country of some hundred thousand citizens, which is disappearing under the sea. Kiribati (pronounced keer-ree-bahss) is made up of thirty-two atolls and a raised coral island that straddle the equator in the middle of the Pacific, and reach barely six and a half feet above sea level. The country’s marine territory surrounding the small islands, which total two hundred and sixty-six square miles, is the size of India. When the tide is high, the water closes in ominously on the shores. Tong can look out at the ocean, turn around, and see ocean on the other side. Several years ago, as a result of rising sea levels caused by climate change, the water rushed in, ripped apart a village, and drove its residents to higher ground. A few nights ago, on the island of Manhattan, Tong told me about the local church, which is all that’s left at the scene. “It’s sitting out there in the middle of the water, because there was a village around it, but it’s no longer,” he said. “And why it remains there is because I’ve asked the village to build a seawall so it doesn’t go, so it can bear testimony to what is happening.”
Tong, who is tanned, gray-haired, and mustachioed, wore a navy jacket, a plum tie, a pale pink shirt, and olive slacks. He spoke with the resignation of a spokesman for a lost cause. (Kiribati’s fate is settled; Tong gives it twenty years.) Since he took office, in 2003, Tong has become an ardent, if a somewhat involuntary, champion of environmentalism as he prepares for impending emergency. He bought about six thousand acres of land in Fiji. He ships off seventy-five citizens to New Zealand every year. He keeps trying to construct seawalls. He’s committed to building up at least one of the islands, so that even if his countrymen are forced to flee, there will still be a homeland to speak of.
At the end of March, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its most damning report yet. “Coastal systems and low-lying areas will increasingly experience adverse impacts such as submergence, coastal flooding, and coastal erosion due to relative sea level rise,” the report stated. It went on, “For coastal flooding, annual damage and protection costs are projected to amount to several percentages of the national GDP for small island states such as Kiribati, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Tuvalu.” (The most recent figures put Kiribati’s G.D.P. at $698 million, ranking at No. 212 in the world.) During the first three months of this year, Kiribati was swept by a series of high tides that were greater than any the country had experienced before. “What I’m seeing today is really a precursor to what is going to happen more frequently in the future, and with greater intensity,” Tong said. “Things that are being speculated upon as happening—we are not speculating. It’s happening.”
In the meantime, Tong is trying to save the fish. He was in New York to raise money for Conservation International, an environmental group that, along with the New England Aquarium, has been helping Kiribati protect its resources—abundant tuna, some humphead wrasse, groupers, snappers, mackerels, and sharks, plus sea turtles, dolphins, birds, and a hundred and twenty species of coral—and build up a trust fund of five million dollars. Next, he is scheduled to be in Washington to attend a conference on oceans hosted by the State Department on June 16th and 17th; there, he plans to announce that Kiribati will close off eleven per cent of its waters to commercial activity at the start of next year. The restriction will block off 157,626 square miles surrounding one of the country’s three main island groups, called the Phoenix Islands, part of a vast territory of ocean in the central Pacific where sixty per cent of the world’s tuna is fished. Tong has been planning the reserve, or the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, as it is known, for almost ten years. He’s had to negotiate with the Japanese, the Koreans, the Taiwanese, the Spanish, and the Americans, all of whom take tuna from the Kiribati’s waters—between four and five hundred million dollars of fish a year, before resale. “A lot of people in the United States eat tuna,” Tong said. “And I hope they do love tuna.” Kiribati will forgo one or two million a year in licensing fees. “The basis of all this is sustainability,” Tong said. “Using resources more wisely, as we haven’t done, in terms of climate change.”
On the night we met, he sat with his legs crossed in a modest hotel suite. By blocking off a protected area, Tong, the leader of a tiny country with negligible impact on carbon emissions, is trying to set an example for the giants who might hardly notice him. He threw up his hands. “I know a lot of people think they will be inconvenienced,” he said. “But how inconvenienced will you be in comparison to your home not being there?”
The following evening, Tong, along with Kiribati’s ambassador to the U.N., Makurita Baaro, attended a gala for Conservation International at the Museum of Natural History. Well-groomed people in business suits and elegant dresses sipped cocktails in the Hall of Biodiversity, and then were led down into the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, under the enormous belly of the blue whale. The room was dimly lit, like the deep sea. Instead of sea cucumbers, the floor had dining tables, decorated with a tropical flair. Coconut green and curry chicken was served, with wine from the Russian River Valley. Thomas Friedman, the Times columnist, whose wife, Ann, serves on the organization’s board along with President Tong, gave a speech, and he asked Tong about his country’s predicament. Over the din of clinking glasses, Tong replied, matter-of-factly, “According to the projections, within this century, the water will be higher than the highest point in our lands.”
Tong’s constituents are spiritual people. Kiribati is a predominantly Christian nation, but its people also pay homage to spirits for the heavens and the land and the sea. “This is why we must maintain the existence of the nation, because our spirits will have nowhere else to go,” he told me. “When you go fishing, you talk to the spirits of the sea so you can get a good catch.” The Kiribati bring a food offering, throw it into the water, and call out the spirit’s name: “Oh, So-and-so, this is something for you. Please welcome us to you. Please give us a good catch, and look after us.”
I asked Tong how his countrymen viewed the spirits now that the tides threaten them.
“The spirits haven’t created the problem,” he said. “We ask the spirits to change the minds of those people who are doing this.”
Ambassador Baaro, who sat beside him, said coolly, “Our global partners.”
Tong sighed, “The spirits haven’t really done that yet, not according to the reaction so far.”
Photograph by Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR.