CPA - The Guardian

Communities living in or near the Torres Strait may have to be relocated if the causes of climate change are not addressed, according to Professor Ross Garnaut.

Ross Garnaut.

Professor Garnaut, who drafted the federal government’s climate change review, said climate change threatened the Strait and lowlands in Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya.

Projections of a rise in sea levels of 26 centimetres to 79 centimetres are possible, he said, citing the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“As we have seen from the smaller increases of the late 20th century, a rise of sea level by half a metre would have a large effect,” Professor Garnaut said in the 2009 Eddie Koiki Mabo Lecture at James Cook University in Townsville.

“A warmer climate would increase the intensity of storm events, the king tides and storms would come from a higher base, and the storm surges would be stronger.

“All of this would happen without the melting of land ice, which could raise sea levels by four metres or more. Fifty centimetres of sea level rise will make life vulnerable to the king tides and the storm surges in the places where most of the 8,000 or so Torres Strait people now live.

“A metre of sea level rise would be much worse. The relevant point is made strongly enough without reflecting upon four metres.

“The more benign possibilities from a failure of effective global mitigation are likely to require the relocation a long way from their homes of hundreds of thousands of people living in and adjacent to the Torres Strait.”

The dire warnings from the climate expert come as no surprise to the people of the Torres Strait. Torres Strait Regional Authority Chairman Toshie Kris outlined those very concerns earlier this year at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which brought together Indigenous people from around the world.

Toshie Kris.

He told the forum that climate change was becoming a real part of daily lives in the Torres Strait.

“Approximately 27 percent of our island communities are affected by climate change and the rising sea level right now in 2009,” the Torres Strait leader said.

“For us this is not a phenomenon that we have the luxury of reading about. Unfortunately for some of us it will become an even more real part of our daily lives each year.

“To give you an example, in January 2009, water depths in some communities rose by a metre due to strong winds and high tides – affecting people, infrastructure, cultural sites, ecosystems and traditional gardens. In addition, other potential impacts of climate change including changes to rainfall patterns, hotter weather and spread of diseases may significantly impact Torres Strait Island communities.”

Mr Kris said the TSRA had formed a partnership with government agencies to address coastal management.

“The committee leads a co-ordinated approach to coastal management and climate change and has been working on identifying long-term sustainable solutions to coastal issues and ways to secure funding to implement these solutions,” he said. “However, funds to protect threatened infrastructure have been limited and hard to get.”

Mr Kris said the people of the Torres Strait had no wish to leave their homes. “We do not want to leave our ancestral lands as these islands and the sea that surrounds them makes us who we are – they are an inseparable part of our physical and spiritual identity. Yet a day may come when we will need to make some very hard decisions.”

The Koori Mail

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