WET FEET MARCHING: CLIMATE JUSTICE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FOR CLIMATE DISPLACED NATIONS IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC

At the first United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) held in Berlin in 1995, Atiq Rahman of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies gave an impassioned speech to the delegates and warned, “If climate change makes our country uninhabitable . . . we will march with our wet feet into your living rooms.”1 Climate change related impacts such as floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, and drought have already caused millions of people around the globe to relocate, both temporarily and permanently, within and without their home countries.2 Never before, however, have climate change related impacts resulted in the disappearance of a nation and forced its population to resettle in a foreign country without any possibility of returning to its homeland. Yet the permanent displacement of a nation due to anthropogenic climate change may soon become a reality. Despite numerous mitigation efforts, including building sea walls and planting mangrove trees, rising sea levels and storm surges have left numerous families on the Carteret Islands of Papua New Guinea homeless and without adequate food and fresh water supplies.3 The islands are predicted to be underwater by 2015, earning the people of the Carterets the notorious distinction as the world’s first climate “refugees.”