Between the lines: An approaching flood?

Climate change puts pressure on Marshall Islanders

The connection between world affairs and local people is sometimes lost. That wasn't the case last week.

As world leaders met in Paris for critical climate talks, some families in Springdale were likely paying close attention to their progress.

Global warming is impacting their homeland 6,000 miles away. These are immigrants from the Marshall Islands, where the rising sea threatens to force a mass migration of those who remain there.

In time, that may mean significant growth of the Marshallese population in Springdale, where 6,000 who are descended from the island nation already make their homes.

It is the largest Marshallese community on the U.S. mainland and stands to grow as relatives and friends of those who have come here also find their way to Northwest Arkansas.

An estimated 20,000 Marshallese now live in the U.S. Hawaii has attracted the most but there are communities in the Pacific Northwest and in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Besides Springdale, Marshallese have settled in Arkansas in Berryville, Huntsville and Pine Bluff.

Recent reporting by the Associated Press, carried locally and elsewhere, including the New York Times, described current conditions in the Marshall Islands, much of which sit barely above sea level.

As AP reported, Marshallese have been moving to the Ozarks for more than three decades, seeking better education, jobs and health care. Now, global warming is pushing more of them to move.

Storm surges from South Pacific tides cause floods. The floodwaters contaminate fresh water and the saltwater kills crops and erodes the land on that string of 1,000 or so islands. Again, most are no more than 6 feet above sea level and few are more than a mile wide.

Floodwaters periodically rush into homes as well, forcing more of the population, which AP lists at 70,000, to consider leaving.

Island residents interviewed for the AP report expect the entire population will have to move within 10 to 20 years, if the warming patterns continue and sea waters keep rising.

Many of the Marshallese don't necessarily want to leave there but expect they'll have to.

"The thought of evacuation is repulsive to us," Foreign Minister Tony de Brum told AP. "We think that the more reasonable thing to do is to seek to end this madness, this climate madness, where people think that smaller, vulnerable countries are expendable and therefore they can continue to do business as usual."

Notably, de Brum was in Paris for those climate change talks, making that argument to the assembled leaders.

Maybe the world will seriously address climate change. Maybe it won't. It's not like the issue is new.

Most likely, the sea will continue to rise and more Marshallese will be coming to the U.S., growing communities like the one in Springdale.

Marshallese do still emigrate for better jobs, education and health care but climate change must now factor into decisions, too. The islands are increasingly less habitable and the opportunity to live and work in the U.S. is freely available to the Marshallese.

That opportunity has to do with a long-standing military history between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands that dates back to the Cold War when the U.S. detonated dozens of nuclear bombs on nearby atolls.

A U.S. ballistic missile defense test site still sits on the largest of Marshall atolls, Kwajalein. The base is home to 1,200 Americans and employs about 900 Marshallese; and, like the rest of the island nation, the base has experienced flooding.

That's just part of life these days for anyone on the islands, just as it is for other low-lying places vulnerable to the sea.

But, unlike other threatened places, a compact struck in 1986 between the nations frees the Marshallese to emigrate to the U.S. They may live and work here without a visa.

That doesn't mean they all have an easy transition. They don't. There can be language problems and many other challenges.

Some get educated in the U.S. or receive medical care here, then return to the islands.

Others settle here, raising families, but they likely never forget those islands the sea is trying to claim.

Commentary on 12/06/2015

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