A surprising climate find
We humans have settled in all kinds of precarious environments: arid deserts, barren tundras, high mountains. No environment is as precarious as atolls, the small, low-lying islands that dot the tropics. As the planet warms and the oceans rise, atoll states like the Maldives, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu seem doomed to disappear, like the mythical Atlantis, into watery oblivion.
Lately, however, scientists have begun to tell a surprising new story about these islands. By comparing aerial photographs from the mid-20th century with recent satellite images, they were able to see how the islands have developed over time. What they discovered is astonishing: Although sea levels have risen, many islands have not shrunk. Most have even remained stable. Some have even grown.
One study that came up Data from scientists on 709 islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans showed that almost 89 percent had increased in area or had not changed much in recent decades. Only 11 percent had shrunk.
To understand why, I spent time with a team of researchers in the Maldives last spring as they collected data on two key pieces of the puzzle: ocean currents and sand.
Currents and waves can erode sandy shorelines, of course. But they can also bring fresh sand ashore from surrounding coral reefs, where the remains of corals, algae, crustaceans and other organisms are constantly ground down into new sediment. (Another source of sediment? Colorful parrotfish, which eat coral and regurgitate white sand from their digestive tracts.)
By studying how these interconnected and complex processes have affected one island – Dhigulaabadhoo, an uninhabited, jagged piece of land a few kilometres north of the equator – scientists hope to better predict how other islands will change.
The next century
Although the research suggests that atolls are not completely washed away, that does not mean they are nothing to worry about. Global warming is putting coral reefs under great pressure. For example, if the ice caps melt faster than expected, sea level rise could accelerate significantly.
Still, scientists say the revelation that atoll islands can naturally adapt to rising sea levels means the people who live on them have a chance to figure out how to deal with their changing environment. It means they have options other than the most drastic one: leaving their homeland altogether.
“I’m convinced that in 50 or 100 years, there will be islands in the Maldives,” one of the team’s researchers, Paul Kench, told me when we were at Dhigulabadhoo. “They won’t look like these islands; they will be different. But there will be land here. For me, that’s the challenge: how do you live with the change that’s coming?”
The Maldives needs to cultivate and recruit more scientific experts who can help with the country’s adaptation efforts, said Ali Shareef, the government’s special envoy for climate change. Without them, it will be difficult to build infrastructure while minimizing damage to reefs, or design cities that can withstand flooding.
Money is also a problem. “If we have access to the technology and finance, I think we can save the Maldives. It’s not all doomsday,” Shauna Aminath, a former environment minister, told me. “The problem is that we don’t have access to financing and technology.”
If we humans can find a way to continue living and thriving on atolls, that bodes well for our ability to do so everywhere on our warming planet. As Jon Barnett, a geographer at the University of Melbourne, put it: “If we can solve climate change for atolls — ‘solve’ is the wrong word — then we can do it anywhere.”
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