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Outside Magazine December 2002

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Tuvalu Toodle-oo (Cont.)


	Pastor Molikao Kaua worries about the flood next time. (Photograph by Matthieu Paley)

IT TURNS OUT THAT JUSTICE and reparations are precisely what Tuvalu is concerned with, though perhaps not in that order. Paani K. Laupepa, a vigorous and articulate 40-year-old assistant secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Energy, and Tourism, is Tuvalu's point man on climate change. The day I arrived, he greeted me at Funafuti's airstrip wearing a business shirt, flip-flops, and a skirtlike garment called a sulu, and immediately inquired after the carton of cigarettes, two bottles of liquor, and package of chocolates that he'd asked me to bring him. He expressed his hopes that I would prove useful in his government's "public relations campaign." Then he fell silent, and gave me a stern once-over. "What are your motives?" he asked.

Let's be honest: I'd come in search of imminent catastrophe. But it seemed like a strange question, and instead it made me think: Paani Laupepa, what are your motives? Why has Tuvalu, alone among the world's five atoll nations and its many low-lying island and coastal countries, embraced the cause of global warming with such single-minded urgency? The Marshall Islands and Kiribati and the Maldives-pancake-flat island chains all-are also prime candidates for erasure, but the world has yet to be serenaded by repeated bulletins heralding their death throes. I had a flash of panic: Tuvalu is sinking, isn't it?

"My motive," I told him, "is to learn as much as possible about the impact of global warming on Tuvalu."

"Relax," Laupepa said. "Take a swim. You're in the islands now."



	Chief Finiki and his no-good pulaka plants. (Photograph by Matthieu Paley)

I wasn't the only palagi who had beaten a path to Tuvalu's officially sanctioned farewell tour. During my week on Funafuti, the members of what we jokingly referred to as the Tuvalu Press Corps included an Australian documentary filmmaker who told me he'd wept upon reading Tuvalu's report to a UN agency on climate change; an earnest American writer-photographer couple whose identification with the natives extended to wearing Tuvaluan garb and spending a night sleeping alongside islanders on mats on Funafuti's airstrip, which does quadruple duty as runway, playing field, gathering place, and frequent nighttime crash pad for locals; and a Finnish writer who had journeyed there by ship, because she refused to contribute to global warming by flying.

Each of us, I'm certain, was intent on bringing home some version of the poignant and alarming story that had begun to appear in the world's press. The Japan Times, August 2001: "Their burial grounds, their schools, their homes, their churches will be enveloped by the ocean. The Tuvaluans can never go home again." The Los Angeles Times, February 2002: Tuvalu "may comprise the first country to pay the ultimate price for a changing climate: national extinction." The Guardian of London, that same month: "The evacuation and shutting down of a nation has begun."

It's irresistible-the stuff of disaster movies and Atlantis myth, perfectly suited to plucking the heartstrings of well-intentioned foreigners-and Tuvaluan officials are only too happy to oblige with print-worthy quotes. "The question," Laupepa told me, "is not if but when disaster strikes, and not if but when we'll be drowned."

Still, I couldn't avoid detecting, from the moment I arrived, an uncomfortably opportunistic strain in my government hosts' entreaties. That week, Tuvaluans would be voting on a new national government. Fifteen members of parliament would be elected; since there are no political parties, each of those 15 had his sights set on building a majority coalition and becoming the next prime minister. Koloa Talake had brought attention to Tuvalu's plight on the world stage, but his four years were up, and some of his critics at home considered him aloof and ineffectual. He faced strong opposition from the likes of former prime minister Kamuta Latasi, an old-timer who opposed dabbling in global affairs and regarded the idea of a lawsuit as a pipe dream.

Prime Minister Talake, however, was bracingly frank about the value to Tuvalu of playing the annihilation-by-global-warming card. He stunned one of my colleagues in the Tuvalu Press Corps by stressing, again and again, that the expense of mounting a legal challenge to the United States and Australia could be justified on practical grounds. "You've got to spend money to make money," he declared.

In short order, then, I came closer to understanding at least one dimension of Paani Laupepa's motives in regard to the press, generally, and to me, in particular. "You might come in handy," Tuvalu's designated enviro-flack told me one morning. "How rich are the readers of your magazine? Very rich? We want to reach the super-rich. Put my name and e-mail in your article in case some of your readers are interested in helping us. If this publicity leads to sympathy and assistance, that's the fallout-the collateral advantage. We'll take it."

Tuvalu may have been sinking, but not as fast as my hopes for a tidy glimpse at the perils of global warming.

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