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Outside Magazine December 2002

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Tuvalu Toodle-oo (Cont.)

TWILIGHT. The sky over Funafuti's lagoon is a rich smear of reds and golds worthy of a Turner seascape. At sunup and sundown, the lagoon becomes a communal meeting place for locals. I'm swimming in glimmering chest-deep water 50 feet from the offices of Tuvalu's policymakers. A couple of men troll the water with nets. I nod a greeting toward a woman who is discreetly soaping herself beneath the water's surface, then slosh over to a circle of three others who stand gossiping and eating raw fish heads and coconut from a floating zinc bucket. They offer me a scrap of fish and show me how to dip it in the salty water for flavor.

"So," I ask, "is this water higher now than when you were children?" The women giggle and shake their heads. One makes a dismissive gesture with her hand. "It's nature's way," she says. "Nature will take care of us."

Nature: Sixty-four million years ago, nature raised a volcanic island here. That volcano has long since sunk beneath the waves,

"This is the sharp edge of the climate-change debate," Conway says. "Forget politicians, scientists, and activists. What it boils down to is waves in my bedroom."

but nature saw to it that Funafuti Atoll remained, poking above the surface. About 3,000 years ago, seafarers from the Polynesian kingdoms of Tonga and Samoa, hundreds of miles to the southeast, spotted the land from their outriggers and came ashore. Even though nature decreed that the islands of Tuvalu were to be graced with poor soil, no mineral resources, and little fresh water, the surrounding seas offered abundant fish and, until not long ago, a comforting bulwark against the rest of the world. Islanders slept on open-air platforms beneath thatched roofs, developed elaborate kinship structures to avoid in-breeding, and devised more ways of cooking coconut than seems possible.

When Tuvalu gained independence in 1978, the natural issue it confronted was how to stay afloat financially, not topographically. Unlike other least-developed countries, it proved remarkably adept at hawking its few assets. Despite its modest per capita income of $1,000, the country is in the black-planning to take in, in 2002, about 50 percent more than the $20 million or so that it is set to spend. It sells fishing rights to the U.S., Japan, Taiwan, and Korea for about $10 million a year; it leased the marketing rights to its ".tv" Internet domain name to a Canadian entrepreneur in a much-publicized deal that has so far brought in more than $30 million (the rights were later leased to VeriSign); it adds capital through the sale of colorful Tuvalu postage stamps; and until 2000, it sold its excess phone capacity to overseas sex-chat operators.

Now Tuvalu's shrewd managers get to calculate the opportunities presented by nature's grandest, most worrying potential crisis. "In my next life," says James Conway, Tuvalu's highest-paid public servant, as he smokes a cigarette on the beach outside his office, "I want to come back as a small island state. All told, it's a good deal. Virtually all of Tuvalu's income comes from one source: the idea of nationhood."

A 43-year-old Californian with degrees in energy economics from Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania, Conway arrived in Tuvalu 12 years ago as a Peace Corps volunteer, working on a solar and diesel electrification project. He fell in love with the country, not least of all for its glorious fragility; during a storm in 1993, ocean waves swept through his house while he slept. "This is the sharp edge of the climate-change debate," he tells me. "Forget politicians and scientists and activists. What it boils down to is waves in my bedroom."

After eight years in Tuvalu, Conway moved to Bonn, where, from 1998 to 1999, he worked as an informal adviser for the International Climate Change Secretariat, a unit of the UN. When he returned to Tuvalu, flush with intimations of the climate change to come, it was in his current, amorphous position as special assistant to the Office of the Prime Minister, a role that he says "commands more power, influence, and respect than I'd ever get back home." Some islanders feel that Conway cuts a mildly suspicious figure-one person used the term "shadow government." None, however, doubt his devotion to scheming on behalf of Tuvalu's welfare. He is widely rumored to be the driving force behind the proposed lawsuit, which he describes as "embryonic," and he coyly admits to fielding inquiries from Greenpeace "and an array of people in the legal profession who are looking for a toehold to bring action against greenhouse-gas emitters."

Conway is smart-surely the smartest American politician in Tuvalu. He knows that Tuvalu is not the only nation facing a threat from global warming, and that it can easily be exploited for symbolic purposes, since, as he says, "Tuvalu presents an enticing image for getting the message out to viewers." But above all he knows that symbolic gestures can sometimes generate real revenue streams. "It's hard to know in what form global warming will bring in funding," he reflects. "It's too soon to tell. But I think it will. Compensation is an issue."

So, no great global-warming windfall yet. But there's still time. Conway finishes his cigarette and locks the prime minister's offices. "Obviously," he says, swinging his briefcase, "Tuvaluans are hysterically concerned about climate change. But Tuvalu has no leverage, internationally, other than its ability to draw attention to its plight and wake up the world. There's no such thing as bad publicity."

We meander along a newly built road. Night is falling, and I offer to buy him a drink. He declines. He has something of a solitary nature, this palagi power broker. "When they make the movie of the story of Tuvalu," he jokes, "I hope they get Sean Penn to play me."

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