A light, taunting shower of rain fell in Funafuti recently. It lasted minutes, with the slightest film of moisture quickly burned away by the bright sun, dashing the hopes of this crowded, parched atoll.
Funafuti and the other eight tiny islands that comprise the Pacific nation of Tuvalu, home to slightly more than 10 000 people, has not had substantial rainfall since last November.
The government, which declared a state of emergency at the end of last month, said the dry spell was unlikely to break until January.
The drought is chiefly attributed to La Niña, the climate phenomenon that unleashes extreme weather across large parts of the Pacific region. But the crisis has also been linked to climate change, with rising sea levels imperilling the islands’ freshwater lens — the layer found beneath coral islands — and leaving many Tuvaluans anxious about the viability of their country.
Climate change is part of the curriculum at Nauti primary school, where the subject has an obvious resonance. “We discuss what it means,” said head teacher Fanoiga Falasa. The view among students is that man-made climate change is testing the tenability of the country, said Falasa, sitting in his office on the edge of the school’s large courtyard.
“Some of them are happy, thinking [climate change] might lead to an overseas trip,” he says. “Some of them feel sad because they might lose their identity, their culture, their home.”
The highest point on Tuvalu, which lies halfway between Australia and Hawaii, is less than five metres above sea level. Most of it is less than a metre above. From the air, Funafuti looks like a sliver of detached coastline.
In the memorable words of Saufatu Sapo’aga, a former Tuvaluan prime minister, climate change for this country is “no different to a slow and insidious form of terrorism”.
Around the corner from the primary school, the Tuvalu hospital is limiting admissions to try to cope with water rationing. The hospital faced an outbreak of gastroenteritis two weeks ago and it is prepared for a spate of waterborne diseases, said Dr Puakena Boreham.
“It is not a public health crisis at the moment, but it will be if it gets worse,” she said.
Sitting on a wooden bench in the hospital’s reception room, a pregnant Fakatau Teulub is waiting for her seven-month check-up. It will be her fourth child. It is “hard, very hard” for her household to get by on the ration of two buckets of water a day, she says.
In temperatures of about 30°C, 40 litres is barely enough for drinking and cooking for Teulub, her children and her husband, a fisherman. Hardly a drop is left for bathing, for washing clothes and dishes. The family’s livestock, two pigs and two chickens, go thirsty.
Teulub would emigrate in a heartbeat, she says. “We’re dying to move, but we don’t have the money.”
Roy Lameko (62) has seen droughts come and go, but “nothing as bad as this”. He, his wife and son have not washed clothes for weeks. They all bathe in the sea. “We keep a cup of water to rinse afterwards.”
Lameko, who is hanging pieces of tuna to dry outside his house, says that with the few crops the islands rely on — coconuts, breadfruit and pulaka (or swamp taro) — failing, people are being forced to dig into any savings to purchase expensive imported foods.
Lameko has two other children, both of whom live in Auckland and send money back monthly to Tuvalu. Will they return? “I don’t know. They want us to go there, but the problem is money,” Lameko says and laughs. “That’s our only problem: money and water.”
Over at the water distribution point next to the government-owned desalination plant, Nelly Semiola says he is going nowhere, although he understands that many of his friends and compatriots want to escape the droughts, remoteness, poverty and fragility.
“I want my life to be here,” he says. “I grew up here. I got married here. So if what’s coming is coming, that’s OK. If we survive, we survive. If we die, we die.” —