Floating Land—Rising Sea: Arts and Minds on Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change is a local and global issue. In past millennia, the people who settled the islands of Moana Nui a Kiva (the Pacific Ocean) undertook the greatest sea migrations of all time. Today there are new migrations, precarious journeys of people displaced by climate change and rising seas. The people of Tuvalu and Kiribati in the north Pacific, Takuu (Mortlock Islands) and the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea, and Australia's Torres Strait Islanders, are now voyaging towards an uncertain future. Rapidly rising sea-levels and massive king tides are encroaching on their villages and salt is affecting arable land. The mass migration of entire island communities is imminent. It is crucial that the rest of the world becomes aware of these Islanders' predicament.