Small islands are in danger if we dont act now
climbing global temperatures
threaten the very existence of small
island developing nations
and low-lying coastal regions i
am from a small island climate change
directly affects
me my family and all people who live on
small island nations
indulge me for a moment when you gaze at
this image
what do you think of an exotic island
getaway
the soothing sounds of the ocean or
basking in the tropical sun
a quintessential island vacation now
take a look at this
what do you see a scene of utter
destruction
a wasteland of debris
infrastructure loss the calamity of a
natural disaster
the picture to my right was taken
september 5th
2017 and the picture to my left was
taken september
6 2017 just a mere
24 hours apart but completely
unrecognizable
side by side so what happened
what you just saw was the dangerously
powerful category 5 hurricane named
irma that hit landfill on the sit on the
island of sinmarton
the island that i call home i sat on the
edge of my seat anxiety ridden knowing
that
my mom my dad my grandparents my
seven-year-old little sister
was bunkering down somewhere as the most
powerful
hurricane in the atlantic ocean ripped
my country apart
with wind speeds of 185 miles per hour
the utter annihilation of saint martin
and its neighbors
was the wake-up call for the caribbean
irma was among the most debilitating
storms to ever hit the caribbean region
and as a prime example
of how climate change isn’t an abstract
notion
no climate change is real and climate
change is happening
right now islands are on the front line
of climate change scattered across the
pacific and the atlantic oceans
these fragile culturally diverse island
states are united by common threats to
their climate
rising sea levels changing rainfall
patterns
increasingly intense hurricanes or
cyclones and warming and acidification
of coastal waters
you see while islands are perceived and
romanticized as
tropical vacation destinations little
attention gets paid to the reality of
vulnerability
that the islands are faced with until it
is too late
so what did i do about this and why am i
here
so i drew on this narrative and i wanted
to understand
what makes my island and all small
islands just so
vulnerable why will islands suffer so
disproportionately from the damaging
impacts of climate change
at large this is based off of five main
geophysical characteristics
small islands are small in size they are
insular which means that they are
completely surrounded by water
they are they are located close to the
equator in
tropical and sub-tropical latitudes and
they have fragile environmental
ecosystems
small islands are shaped by forces
outside of their control
and thus any extreme climate event
is felt sooner and more profoundly
exacerbating
any pre-existing economic and political
stresses
that are felt so what does it mean to
have a fragile environmental ecosystem
so loss of biodiversity due to ocean
acidification and coral bleaching
will hurt tourism economies as well as
decrease
natural resilience against coastal
erosion
eighty percent of caribbean reefs are
affected and shorelines
are eroding the beaches the marine life
the flora the fauna they
attract thousands of tourists every year
and help create
jobs imagining islands without their
world famous beaches
is hard to believe but it is an imminent
reality so we are located in the
hurricane belt
low atmospheric pressure and warmer
waters near the equator
increase the likelihood of more intense
and more frequent hurricanes or cyclones
with very strong wind speeds based on
these three variables
increased hurricane damage loss of
tourism revenue
and infrastructure damage the caribbean
region could see as much as
10.7 billion dollars in losses within
the next
five years or as much as 22 billion
by 2050 now let’s break down how small
size
insularity and remoteness affect us so
kirabati
tulavu and the maldives are countries in
the pacific
made up of low-lying atoll islands that
are
just a few meters above sea level
so just one meter of sea level rise can
fully
inundate these islands and make them
completely disappear
off of the map if societies or even
communities are forced to leave because
of these impacts
some nations may very well lose their
sovereignty
as coastal flooding and erosion
increases
the caribbean will be one of the fastest
displaced communities across the globe
a pattern soon to be replicated in other
coastal communities
we saw firsthand how hurricane irma left
barbuda completely
unhabitable with 95 percent of buildings
on the island destroyed
1800 residents were forced to evacuate
and find refuge
in neighboring antigua for the first
time
in 300 years there wasn’t a single
person
on the island of barbuda one of the
first glimpses
of what it means to be a climate refugee
and like the islanders of kiribati the
growing reality of what it might mean
to be a citizen of a landless nation
can you imagine holding a passport to a
country that
no longer physically exists what does
nationhood mean without a
physical tie to the cultural and natural
heritage of the land
that is shaped by its people let that
sink in for a moment
small islands have contributed the least
amount of greenhouse gases but face the
brunt
of damage and losses due to these
extreme climate events
we can’t afford to have been relatively
neglected during international climate
talks
we should be at the front lines of
climate action
so why aren’t we you see climate change
presents both a challenge and an
opportunity
the opportunity is green low emission
climate change resilience strategies
that can reduce
poverty grow local economies in the long
run
and save whole islands from disappearing
the challenge collectively acting and
committing to these goals
as global citizens of the world you see
while we have made strides with
195 current signatories to the paris
agreements
the signatures alone aren’t going to
make any tangible differences
this suggests that while most
governments agree in theory
they have not yet put into practice the
necessary and aggressive
action that is needed to curtail
emissions
and this is exactly what happens on an
individual level
a survey by reuters found that 69
of americans wanted the government to
take aggressive action to combat climate
change
but only one third would be willing to
pay an extra 100
to make it happen what individuals are
saying
is that yes i know there’s a problem but
it’s not my job to resolve it
the reason we seem incapable of coming
together to protect the climate
is known as the tragedy of commons a
shared resource tends to be rapidly
depleting because
no single actor whether it’s a country
or a person
considers how their actions affect other
users
in other words you reap all the benefits
and suffer only part of the costs
and therefore you are tempted to over
exploit the resource
you see individuals and countries alike
are refusing to engage with the simple
solutions because we want to see
big changes that moonshot landing we
want to see
aggressive policies we want to see
widespread adoption of renewable
energies
we want to see a decarbonized climate
change free world
but we’re not willing to do the work it
takes to get there
individuals tend to defer to governments
in big corporates
and countries tend to defer to
multinational organizations
because we’re constantly shifting the
blame
the irony of this is that by waiting for
the big changes
and waiting for someone to take
accountability
the urgency to address climate change
only grows bigger
and it makes the small yet meaningful
changes
harder to implement because we are
simply
running out of time but do not despair
let me enlighten you on a few things
that i’ve learned in this very short
life of mine
humans are not as free thinking as we
often paint ourselves to be
i know you believe you have free will
but social psychologists point out that
free will is a paradox we think
we can make our own decisions but the
truth is
we look to others for guidance about how
we should behave
your everyday likes and dislikes are
primed by genius advertising or some
ai amazon algorithm which is telling you
what you like we have social media
influences
and we are constantly flooded with
stimulus that
impact our decisions subconsciously
every single day
now i may be too simplistic here in my
thinking but this is what i believe
humans are wired the same way people
and leaders alike need a nudge and a few
cues from others to change their
behavior
now i’m not saying this because i’m like
an expert
in social psychology but i’ve seen this
validation with my own eyes
so indulge in my naivety for just a
moment
because i’m standing here before you
today not because my environmental
stewardship was
brought to me by my dream or i woke up
one day and i just decided
that i was going to live life with a
greater purpose no
it came to me when i was picking up
garbage
at mullet bay beach at the international
coastal cleanup
organized by a local environmental ngo
called the pride foundation
that day something changed in me and
something clicked
after i heard someone say it’s not our
job to pick up other people’s trash
and as i was shoving diapers glass
bottles
dilapidated flip-flops into a trash bag
i wondered to myself
why am i picking up so much trash why is
there so much trash here
i looked to my left and i looked to my
right and i saw there were no trash
bins in sight and it became obvious to
me
that we needed more bins so i decided to
get involved with the local ngo that
advocated
for trash free waters and those leaders
became my nudge
and with the platform they gave me i
found myself voicing these concerns to
the island’s parliament
and the dutch royal family about a month
later
i was on the very same beach but this
time i wasn’t picking up trash
i was placing five new trash bins
that year we promoted awareness across
local districts
we had higher turnouts and more youth
involvement
and government participation in fact i
went to
several developing nations in south
america indonesia
singapore rural india and nepal to study
the effects of climate change
i learned the same thing individuals
everywhere were creating these small
nudges that they
that had a ripple effect creating
lasting change in increasing government
action
meet mahar he’s cleaning up mumbai’s
rivers
one cleanup at a time and by now you
know
i love to pick up trash and so while
being a student mentor for a study
abroad program
on climate change policy and resilience
i ended up collaborating with him to do
a joint cleanup
i simply put the date and time of the
cleanup in our whatsapp chat
and the next morning to my surprise i
saw
every single one of my students awake at
the crack of dawn
26 students to be exact ready to clean
up mumbai’s mitti river
now i didn’t save humanity nor did i
change the state of climate change
but i helped make a small difference on
my
island and a river a little bit cleaner
in mumbai sometimes all it takes is one
nudge to have a domino effect
take greta thundberg for example now i’m
not suggesting that we all are going to
be like greta
i hope we do but one thing i’m fairly
certain is that
your everyday choices do matter and each
choice you make
sets the precedent for a ripple effect
and a chain reaction
if everyone went vegetarian just for one
day in the united states
we would save a hundred billion gallons
of water and cut over 1.2
million tons of co2 in the atmosphere
the fashion industry is responsible for
an alarming 10 percent of
all carbon emissions and this is higher
than maritime and airline travel
let me let me put that in perspective to
make the clothes that you are wearing
right now you emit
more co2 than the plane that you would
fly on
today an average person buy 64 new
articles of clothing a year
compared to 12 articles back in the
1990s
wearing one item of clothing for nine
months longer
can reduce your carbon footprint by 30
percent
now the point you see isn’t so much
about quantifying your direct impact
as much as sending a message and leading
by example
and this together can solve the
collective action problem
and we’re seeing it already who would
have thought that a company
would make meat-free burgers and now be
worth
billions of dollars or who would have
thought the world’s largest most
dominant players in the oil industry
would feel threatened by teenagers
striking in the streets
or that climate change would be the
leading conversations
on the u.s presidential stage today we
have
thousands of youths striking in the
streets hands
reaching out voices sounding the alarm
for warming temperatures
fighting for those who are
disproportionately impact
from the drought-ridden villages in
africa to the subsistence farmers in
india
to those flooded in venice city and to
the floridians along the keys
and of course sinking islands in the
pacific and caribbean ocean
climate change is not binary there’s no
debate on whether it is happening or not
happening
the crux of the matter will be how much
climate change will the world
experience and my call to action for you
today is to understand
just how small islands are the looking
glass into the future
if we are not acting now we are
endangering everyone
who is alive and future generations to
come
we are all the victims and the
perpetrators
the more action we take collectively the
more livable our planet earth will be
for ourselves
and for the abundance of life that is to
be lived on earth
thank you