Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s focus has been climate change and the legacy of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands through the mediums of poetry, performance and media. She is the co-founder of Jo-Jikum, a Marshall Islands-based nonprofit dedicated to Marshallese youth and environmentalism.
She is currently serving as climate envoy for the Marshall Islands Ministry of Environment and is pursuing her PhD in Pacific Studies at Australia National University.
Pacific Island Times: How has climate change already impacted our country and what are the most urgent challenges we face in your opinion?
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner: We’re already seeing more flooding events. Just last year, we had multiple inundations across different islands that impacted our infrastructure, gardens and homes. It was probably the most significant amount of flooding I’ve seen within just a couple of weeks across several islands. Now that we have better internet connections across the neighboring islands, we’re able to get those reports immediately, which wasn’t the case in the past.
Most of our rural communities are saying the same thing: they’re seeing sea level rise as the most obvious sign of climate change.
I highlight this because what’s happening now isn’t just what the science is telling us; it’s what we’re hearing directly from community members on the ground. We’re also experiencing more intense droughts. These climate impacts are changing how we plan for the future and how we develop as a country.
Now, it’s essential that we incorporate climate change impacts into our development plans. It’s not just about boosting our GDP or addressing poverty anymore; our government now has to consider climate change as a key part of the planning process.
In terms of the most urgent challenge we’re facing, a lot of my work focuses on adaptation.
What keeps those of us working in climate change up at night is: how do we manage the scale of change needed for our nation to properly adapt to sea level rise? We need to overhaul much of our infrastructure, change how we operate internally, and figure out how to integrate climate change impacts into the work of each government department.
All of these factors need to be considered to effectively implement plans across different sectors because climate change doesn’t just affect one part of our society.
Right now, climate change is handled by one department: the Climate Change Directorate. But we know that this will be a cross-sectoral issue and that we’ll need to work with every department.
If we’re going to need to build seawalls and improve building codes, then that would require work with the Department of Public Works, which has already begun with the Urban Resilience Program. We’ll need marine resource studies to understand how climate change is affecting our coral reefs and fish populations. We’re also going to need a dedicated agency to look at nature-based solutions.
All of these pieces need to be planned for properly. Just overhauling our entire infrastructure is already a stressful and complex task, and, on top of that, we have to consider governance structures.
We also have to consider the complicated and extremely expensive engineering that will be required. From the Deltares Report, we know it will take about $9 billion just to properly adapt one island and that only includes hard infrastructure, not any of the social or cultural adaptations that will need to be considered.
That’s probably our most urgent issue right now: where are we going to find the funding to protect ourselves from climate change and sea level rise?
PIT: What traditional Marshallese knowledge might we have to help our community adapt to climate change?
Kathy: Coastal protection needs to be implemented and scaled up, specifically, solutions that are called “nature-based solutions.” We have traditional knowledge that has always given us the skills we need to survive on an atoll. Honestly, there needs to be a lot more work to explore what forms of traditional Marshallese knowledge are out there that applies as adaptation so we can scale it up and share it properly.
Right now, a lot of the ideas being discussed are large-scale engineering solutions. But they are very expensive and should not be the only options we explore. Plus, some of these solutions could end up harming our environment.
So how do we put our traditional knowledge into practice? There’s still a lot to learn, and the climate sector needs to recognize that gap and figure out how to use our traditional knowledge more effectively.
PIT: How might residents of a heavily impacted atoll handle the challenge of relocating to another island that is not traditionally their own? Given the decades-long experience of Marshallese nuclear victims with displacement—many of whom have resettled in the United States—how do you navigate the complexities of relocating a displaced community within the Marshall Islands?
Kathy: That’s something we’ve consistently brought up when talking about the loss and damage of land due to climate change: what kinds of non-economic losses are countries like ours already experiencing? It’s easy to see how this could potentially reshape our land tenure system, much like the U.S. nuclear testing did. We’re going to have to rethink and adapt our system to respond to climate change.
The ADB is considering funding a series of meetings and workshops to support that process. We’ve already started discussions with other Pacific countries, especially other atoll nations, about how they’re planning to address land tenure issues.
We recently had these conversations at a workshop in the Maldives, and we know that we have a very unique set of challenges with our land tenure system when it comes to figuring how to elevate land or extend land out into the lagoon, or even internal relocation.
I want to emphasize that our land tenure shouldn’t be seen as just a challenge but also as a critical part of our solution. A big part of the solution is going to have to come from within. We’re going to have to figure a lot of this out ourselves, but mostly through the guidance of our Irooj and our Alaps, our traditional leaders, who will be crucial to this process.
PIT: One profound lesson the older Bikinian people have imparted to me over the years is that their identity is intrinsically tied to their homeland, which they regard as their “gift from God.” What becomes of a people when this traditional and spiritual connection to their land is severed? Even after decades of living in the United States, Bikinians there continue to identify themselves by their ancestral homeland. The pressing question is: what happens to this deep-rooted bond when their islands are lost forever beneath the sea?
Kathy: That’s the most tragic part of all this. A lot of lessons from the U.S. nuclear testing period, and the lands we lost because of it, can easily be adapted for use in the climate space. There was a land tenure committee formed back then to handle various land claims under the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, and we could follow a similar process now. When a loss and damage fund is eventually developed, we could potentially use that knowledge to assign a monetary value to any land lost due to climate change.
This is something we’re hoping to pursue if the International Court of Justice rules in our favor this summer because climate change is increasingly becoming a legal issue.
I went to the ICJ with our deputy attorney general and ambassador, John Silk, this past December, where we presented oral testimony on the advisory opinion on climate change in The Hague.
It’s an important case, with multiple countries providing testimonies. There were 97 countries that provided an oral testimony, along with eleven international organizations. If the ICJ rules in our favor, it would allow us to bring additional climate change cases against various states.
Our team did talk about our past ICJ nuclear case and how exhausting and draining that process was, but climate change is different from the nuclear issue because this is a crisis that multiple countries are facing together.
(This is the first installment of a two-part interview.)
Jack Niedenthal is the former secretary of Health Services for the Marshall Islands, where he has lived and worked for 43 years. He is the author of “For the Good of Mankind, An Oral History of the People of Bikini,” and president of Microwave Films, which has produced six award-winning feature films in the Marshallese language. Send feedback to jackniedenthal@gmail.com
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