The 2018 OUTSIDE magazine published a story about the imminent drowning of the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. The story’s headline, “Tuvalu Toodle-oo,” drew on the expectation that Tuvalu would soon sink beneath the rising seas of global warming. “And guess what?” the story’s introduction informed its readers. “It’s your fault.” Dozens, if not hundreds, of similar stories, broadcasts, films and books have appeared since then, almost all with doom-laden titles.

They contemplate with grim fascination the disappearance of low-lying atoll archipelagos like Tuvalu, while blaming the high-carbon lifestyles of the West for, as Outside put it, “the obliteration of an ancient, peaceful civilisation halfway around the world.” Well, guess what again? According to a report published in February 2018 in the scientific journal Nature Communications by three researchers in the University of Auckland’s School of Environment, Tuvalu isn’t sinking, or even shrinking—it’s expanding. Tuvalu is the fourth smallest country in the world. It has a land area of just 26 kilometres squared (about a tenth the size of Wellington) spread across nine atolls that occupy a swathe of ocean five times the size of New Zealand.

The researchers used data from aerial photographs and satellite imaging gathered over the same 40-year time period, and measured shoreline change across 19,403 transects of Tuvalu’s reef islands. All the islands showed physical change. Three-quarters of them were found to have expanded, with one more than doubling in size. The rest decreased in size. Expansion was most pronounced in medium-sized and large islands on the exposed windward side of atolls. Such islands are built from coarse sediments that are typically deposited on reef platforms by storm-driven waves. Shrinkage was greatest in small sand islands on the leeward side of atolls. Only one of the 101 islands disappeared.

Example of island change and dynamics in Tuvalu between 1971 and 2014 (Supplied: Kench, Ford and Owen)

Perhaps the most damaging effect of the drowning-islands rhetoric is that it has conditioned atoll islanders to think of themselves as climate victims doomed to lose their islands to rising seas, and, in the worst-case scenario, to become stateless refugees. Recognition that their land will not disappear gives island dwellers hope and incentive to draw on their traditional traits of resilience, adaptability and skill in continuing to inhabit the islands they call home. It should also motivate governments and aid agencies to focus less on engineering interventions and more on a strategic approach to multi-atoll development.

To be sure, the future habitability of atoll islands is more than a matter of land to build on. There will be other stresses to face, such as increasing soil salinity, salt-water intrusion into aquifers and damaging weather events such as droughts and cyclones. But on the evidence from Tuvalu, this is no time to be saying “toodle-oo”.     https://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/destinations/south-america/tuvalu-toodle-oo/ 

Toodle-oo, Tuvalu! Excerpt from Sydney Morning Herald March 4, 2006 — 11.00am:  It’s small, and getting smaller. Filmmaker Antony Balmain reports from the Commonwealth’s tiniest nation. IN A large world, Tuvalu is beautifully small. Its statistics are impressively concentrated. Its population of 12,000 makes it the tiniest Commonwealth country and the world’s smallest independent nation after the Vatican – which, unlike Tuvalu, is not fielding a team for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. But there’s a downside: Tuvalu may be one of the next countries to disappear off the face of the earth – a victim of rising sea levels and the greenhouse effect. It is hard to believe until you are there to see it that the country averages two metres above sea level and that its highest point peaks at almost five metres. A recently released study by the British Antarctic Survey indicated that ocean levels could rise by up to five metres by the end of the century. The Australia Institute has warned that Tuvalu could be one of four low-lying countries that will go under if the climate predictions are anywhere near accurate.