Tiny Tuvalu Fights for Its Literal Survival

The second smallest nation on Earth hopes to turn itself into an example of sustainable development that others can emulate.

But the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu and its 10,500 people may only have 50 years or less to set that example before it is swept away by rising sea levels due to climate change.
“Construction of the first ever biogas digestor on a coral island is complete,” said Gilliane Le Gallic, president of Alofa Tuvalu, a Paris-based group that is working with the local Tuvaluan government.

Located on a small islet near Tuvalu’s capital of Funafuti, the biogas digester uses manure from about 60 pigs to produce gas for cooking stoves. More importantly, more than 40 Tuvaluans have been trained at the newly opened Tuvalu National Training Centre on renewable energy.

“We are trying to create simple, workable models of sustainable development that can be reproduced by others elsewhere,” Le Gallic, a documentary filmmaker, told IPS from Paris.

After working on the film “Trouble in Paradise”, which documented Tuvalu’s plight as the first nation destined to be wiped out by climate change, Le Gallic felt she had to get involved in finding solutions. In 2004, she and some partners developed “Small Is Beautiful”, a decade-long plan to assist Tuvaluans in surviving as a nation, and if possible, to allow them to remain on their ancestral land.

Both the local government and people are strong supporters of the plan and want to “become a model of an environmentally respectful nation”, she said. “I think Tuvalu can be a powerful symbol and example to the world.”

Although it is likely to become the first nation of environmental refugees, because Tuvalu has virtually no greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy projects there do not qualify for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) funding. CDM is a market mechanism created by the Kyoto Protocol that allows polluters in one country to earn “carbon credits” by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in another.

IPS