96 Time September 23, 2019
that make up this region are particu-
larly vulnerable to rising temperatures
and sea levels, two of the many con-
sequences of climate change. If these
places are lost under the waters or be-
come uninhabitable, humanity will lose
so much: wildlife, natural resources,
unique cultures, languages and values.
But the people who live there will lose
everything.
From my experiences meeting ref-
ugees all around the world, whenever
people are displaced, their first instinct
is to seek a practical local solution inside
their own country. Only when that is not
sustainable do they usually cross a bor-
der. And even then, they tend to remain
in their region.
About 80% of all refugees— people
who have fled conflict or persecution
in their countries—are living in nations
neighboring their nations of origin.
Fewer than 1% of refugees are perma-
nently resettled in foreign countries.
The majority of refugees I have met
want to return home and resume theirHilda
Heine
GOVERNANCE
Climate change is literally at
Marshall Islands President
Hilda Heine’s doorstep.
“Around my house, I have
had to build a seawall,”
she says, “because there
is water coming over from
the shoreline.” The sea is
encroaching quickly on
President Heine’s low-lying
Pacific island state, and
over the past four years,
the government has had
to put in place adaptive
measures like building
coast- protection systems
and seawalls, she says.
Heine has taken to the
international stage to share
the story of her country
and the difficult decisions
her compatriots are facing,
including the possibility
of relocating. She chairs
the Climate Vulnerable
Forum, a group of some
50 countries particularly in
peril from climate change,
despite having contributed
a pittance to atmospheric
greenhouse gases. Heine
is adamant that everyone
needs to take action; she’s
committed the Marshall
Islands to going carbon-
neutral by 2050, and the
nation was the first to
submit its emissions pledge
under the Paris Agreement.
—Jennifer Duggan
CLIMATE OPTIMISTS
Warmer and more acidic waters,
brought on by climate change,
have caused mass coral-bleaching
events in recent years, harming huge
swaths of the Great Barrier Reef;
it’s devastating for wildlife, fisheries
and Australia’s tourist industryThe nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu,
both comprising numerous low-lying
islands and atolls scattered in the
Pacific Ocean, are on the front lines
of the climate crisis; sea-level rise
has already affected as many as half
the families living on some islands,
like Kiritimati2
In November 2018, thanks to
drier-than-normal conditions and a
heat wave, hundreds of wildfires—
or bushfires, as they’re called
locally—blazed across Queensland;
in Australia’s recorded history, there
had never before been such extreme
fires in the eastern part of the country3
Recent years have seen grape
harvests fall by 30% to 50% in
some of Australia’s most important
winemaking regions, thanks to longer
and more intense droughts that
threaten the $6 billion wine industry,
among the world’s biggest