The Attacking Ocean by Brian Fagan Read Free Book Online Page A

Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, also cause havoc on low-lying Maldivian atolls. Eighty-two people died and twelve thousand were displaced by the surging waves, which also did millions of dollars of damage to luxury resorts. In 2008, then-president Mohamed Nasheed announced a plan to purchase land in Sri Lanka or India to resettle the Maldive Islanders, but nothing has yet come of this idea.
    No one knows what will happen when sea levels rise to the point when the Maldives lose significant land. The three hundred thousand people living on the islands—and the population is increasing—are already finding themselves competing for ever-shrinking space, while,inevitably, the tourist economy will slowly implode in the face of the ocean. 12 Maldivian fisheries, a staple of the economy and a primary food source for the islanders, are already in decline, thanks to pollution and coral destruction. The options for the future are at best limited, for expensive sea defenses or even floating islands are far beyond the resources of the government, even with substantial foreign assistance. Will there be violence in a country short of land where authoritarian rule has a long history, despite democratic experiments? Or will the entire population have to leave the sinking islands and settle elsewhere? There is even talk of the country suing the United States for not doing enough to combat global warming and rising sea levels. In the real world, however, the islanders will probably continue to occupy their homes until the bitter end, for to move away is always heart wrenching and to be avoided at all costs.

    Figure 12.4 Malé, capital of the Maldive Islands. J. W. Alker. © Imagebroker/Alamy.
    Herein lies the dilemma of small islands: Their options are far more limited than people on low-lying coastal plains, who at least have more space. There are no utopian solutions for people living in the midst of open ocean where swells can build over thousands of kilometers. It isnot as if they are living on lakes, like Lake Titicaca, where the Uros people used to live in forty fishing villages fashioned from totora reeds that float in the middle of the lake. Most of the Uros now dwell on the mainland, free of the constant labor of keeping their homes afloat.
    Small island governments are vociferous about their plight, often blaming industrialized countries for global warming and rising sea levels, and pushing for financial assistance to combat their impending inundation. Such lobbying seems to have fallen on largely deaf ears, for the problems of remote island nations are hardly a high priority in the international realm, especially when the solutions involve long-term thinking that is often unimaginable to politicians obsessed with election cycles. However, as sea levels slowly rise, extreme weather events with their storm surges become more frequent, and ever-lower islands face death sentences from unpredictable tsunamis, the prospect of large-scale out-migration must be considered just as in Bangladesh.
    The crisis of barrier islands and remote atolls unfolds at a time when the world lacks any international policies for coping with climatic refugees from small island nations, let alone people in river deltas and on mainland shores. Their plight, still coming into urgent focus, is a global challenge that cries out for measured, international policies to confront the problem head-on before thousands of disoriented, fearful, and hungry migrants arrive on foreign shores where they are unwelcome. For the first time in history, we face a challenge of forced involuntary migration for millions of people, triggered not by ruthless kings, conquering armies, or prosecuting fanatics, but by the natural forces of our capricious world.

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“The Crookedest River in the World”
    Mark Twain memorably observed that “the Mississippi … is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable.” He also called it “the crookedest river in the