Displacing Liturgy: A Pacific Exploration

The Pacific, “the liquid continent,” is among a number of countries in the world on the forefront of climate change. The Pacific Island Countries (PICs) have been identified as a cluster of countries under threat due to climate change in international agreements, academic writings and the media. The “most significant effects of climate change include reductions in agricultural productivity; reductions in water quantity and quality, with associated impacts on agriculture, health; increases in climatic events; coastal erosion and inundation as a result of extreme events and sea level rise.” The impact of climate change is anticipated to displace up to 250 million people worldwide by 2050. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that “an annual average of 21.5 million people have been forcibly displaced by weather-related sudden onset hazards–such as floods, storms, wildfires, extreme temperature–each year since 2008.” The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center’s (IDMC) 2016 global displacement report recorded 19.2 million NEW displacements across 113 countries as a result of disasters in 2015. In the first six months of 2020, the IDMC reported 14.6 million new internal displacements across 127 countries of which 9.8 million was due to disasters and the remaining 4.8 million triggered by conflict and violence. The impact of climate change is already evident and felt in the Pacific in a variety of ways. For those in Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Tokelau, and the Maldives time is already running out. The rising sea level, the “overflowing ocean” is drowning them out. Several coastal communities across the Pacific have already been relocated due to environmental degradation. In Fiji, for example, up to thirty-four coastal villages have been identified for relocation inland due to rising sea or river levels. Five of the Solomon Islands have already been lost to the rising sea. The people of the Carteret islands in Papua New Guinea have already experienced the complexities of resettlement in Bougainville. Within the last four years Tonga, Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa have experienced destructive category 4 and 5 cyclones. The effects of El Nino are currently affecting the highlands of PNG, parts of Vanuatu, and Fiji. Many continue to die of hunger due to famine. It is expected that 4.37 million people in the Pacific are likely to be at risk from drought. Retreat from a Rising Sea traces the causes behind rising sea levels and the implications for diverse coastlines, demonstrating the impact of global warming and rising sea levels beyond the global South. The authors detail specific threats faced by Miami, New Orleans, New York, and Amsterdam. Aware that sea level has changed throughout the earth’s long history, they emphasize how global variations in the sea level “are due to changes in the volume of the earth’s oceans... and very gradual changes in the capacity of ocean basins” as well as the “direction and intensity