Climate refugeesBikini islanders petition to relocate to U.S. as rising seas threaten to swallow their island
About 1,000 Bikini islanders have petitioned to be relocated to the United States as rising seas threaten to swallow their adopted home. Several hundred islanders were moved from their homes on the Bikini Atoll in 1946 when the United States decided to use it for nuclear weapons tests. In 1948 the islanders were settled on a nearby island in the Marshall chain called Kili. In the last decade, however, climate change and sea level rise have made life on Kili dangerous, as the island has been steadily losing the struggling against huge tides and increasingly ferocious storms.
Paradise disappearing // Source: commons.wikimedia.org
About 1,000 Bikini islanders have petitioned to be relocated to the United States as rising seas threaten to swallow their adopted home.
Several hundred islanders were moved from their homes on the Bikini Atoll in 1946 when the United States decided to use it for nuclear weapons tests. In 1948 the islanders were settled on a nearby island in the Marshall chain called Kili.
In the last decade, however, climate change and sea level rise have made life on Kili dangerous, as the island has been steadily losing the struggling against huge tides and increasingly ferocious storms.
Not much remains of the Bikini Atoll, where the United States conducted twenty-three nuclear tests, including the Bravo hydrogen bomb, the largest weapon detonated at that time by the United States.
The United States established a resettlement trust fund which helped the Bikini residents build new homes on Kili and start businesses. The fund also helped build roads, an airfield, and more.
Bloomberg Business reports that for forty years life was peaceful on Kili, but global warming has changed all that. Homes are being swamped by rising sea water, floods have become more frequent, and salty water is creeping up from beneath, destroying agriculture and threatening water supplies. Earlier this year the island’s only airfield was completely flooded for days.
“The people of Bikini came back to us and asked us to take this proposal to the United States, to request the resettlement trust fund be used to settle people in the United States not just the Marshall Islands,” Tony de Brum, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands, told the BBC.
“We have not seen the final text of the legislation but the request that went in was on the basis of Kili being uninhabitable because of climate change.”
The U.S. Department of the Interior said it supports the islanders and is now working on legislation which would amend the terms of the resettlement trust.
The United States has signed an agreement with the Marshalls Islands which stipulates that the islanders have the right to live, work, and study in the United States without restrictions on the length of their stay.
“This is an appropriate course of action for the United States to take regarding the welfare and livelihood of the Bikinian people, given the deteriorating conditions on Kili and Ejit Islands in the Marshall Islands — with crowding, diminishing resources, and increased frequency of flooding due to King Tides on their islands,” said Assistant Secretary of the Interior Esther Kia’aina.
