Chances are you’ve never heard of the tiny Pacific island nation of Kiribati, let alone how to say its name (it’s pronounced “Kiribas”).
But as glaciers melt and ocean levels rise, Kiribati’s 117,606 people are fighting to protect their homeland, a patchwork of 33 coral atolls and islands barely above sea level.
Kiribati’s plight isn’t nearly as well-known as the polar bear’s. Yet. But that’s the point: To a lot of people, including those in northwest Ohio’s faith-based community, it is inconceivable how people can be so indifferent to fellow human beings.
Now, as climate change becomes a bigger issue worldwide, more and more people are learning about Kiribati - but many also believe it is too late.
Literally on the other side of the world some 6,122 miles from Toledo, Kiribati is all by itself along the equator.
It is the only country in all four quadrants of the world, and is the first to see the sun rise each day. Fiji and New Zealand are due south of it, and Australia is to the southwest.
Those becoming more engaged with it and with climate change in general include the Catholic Diocese of Toledo.
On Wednesday night, the diocese’s St. John XXIII Catholic Community in Perrysburg Township aired a 2018 film about Kiribati called Anote’s Ark.
The 77-minute documentary by Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rytz premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. It has been lauded at that and other festivals, but it also has drawn controversy from Kiribati’s new president, Taneti Maamau, who disagrees with former Kiribati President Anote Tong’s views on climate change.
Mr. Maamau has told American media outlets that he agrees climate change is real, but not man-made. His approach is to try building up Kiribati. He also has barred Mr. Rytz and other foreign journalists from entry to his country.
The film shows Mr. Tong as he travels the world in search of people who might help save his homeland and its culture.
The event organizer, Bob Clark-Phelps, a layperson in charge of St. John XXIII’s OurNEST program, said his goal is to “start a conversation” in the Toledo area about Kiribati and other low-lying island nations, where an estimated 800,000 people in all are at risk now of being displaced by rising sea levels. Right behind them are millions of people living anywhere from Bangladesh to Miami.
Residents in the western Lake Erie region are now learning more about economic losses farmers throughout the Midwest have experienced in recent years from fierce, relentless storms battering the region each spring. Storm frequency and intensity has led to heavier algal blooms in western Lake Erie because of the heavier runoff of nutrients, Mr. Clark-Phelps said.
But other places in the world, such as Kiribati, help put a human face on the climate crisis, he said.
“It’s becoming a bigger issue because it’s more obvious,” he told The Blade.
OurNEST is an acronym for Our Natural Environmental Stewardship Team, a program St. John XXIII created after Pope Francis issued his landmark 2015 encyclical on the need for mankind to address climate change.
Mr. Clark-Phelps also serves as leader of a Toledo-area chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a group that strives to get national climate policies adopted in Washington and on the state levels with help of ordinary citizens working with elected officials and businesses that help put them in office.
Some 105 people attended Wednesday night’s film viewing, many who appears to be 55 years of age and older. The majority raised their hands when asked if it was their first time there, a response which pleased Mr. Clark-Phelps because he said he doesn’t want to keep hosting events for the same people.
Mr. Clark-Phelps said it is his goal to get hundreds of citizens involved, and to help many others Toledo-area residents better understand how climate change has become a humanitarian crisis in other parts of the world.
The event began with opening remarks from Deacon Ed Irelan, Office of Life and Justice coordinator for Catholic Charities of Northwest Ohio.
Following the film was a discussion with Mike Roman, a University of Cincinnati academic adviser who made his first of many trips to Kiribati as a Peace Corps volunteer in 2000. He is involved in a Facebook page called Humans of Kiribati, and met Mr. Clark-Phelps through the Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
Now 40, Mr. Roman said he has spent half his life going between the United States and Kiribati.
He said his adopted Kiribati family has become a second family to him.
“You have to understand that if someone makes you part of their family over there you’ve basically been adopted by about a quarter of the country,” Mr. Roman said.
He said he makes return visits there at least once every two years. His next will be in May.
“We’re all in the same canoe,” Mr. Roman said.
He said northwest Ohioans should not ignore what is happening to Kiribati and other parts of the world.
“It’s coming for you,” Mr. Roman said of climate change.
This year marks three decades since Kiribati residents began trying to get the rest of the world to understand their plight in 1989. Their motto is that they are not sinking; they are fighting.
Mr. Roman described them as proud people who — despite news reports about possibly becoming the world’s first climate refugees and emigrating to Fiji, New Zealand, or Australia - want to hang onto to what they have in Kiribati to honor their ancestors. They have a connection to their homeland that is hard for many Americans to understand, and many of them don’t want to lose their cultural identity, he said.
His adopted family is among those who don’t want to leave, even though the film concludes by saying Kiribati will likely be washed away sometime this century unless something major is done to address climate change.
“That’s kind of taken over my life,” Mr. Roman said of his affection for Kiribati and his determination to address climate change. “The tie between people and land there is so strong. It’s an ecological genocide.”
In the film, Mr. Tong said he was seeking help from other countries to either provide Kiribati with aid or with assistance for relocating, even though many Kiribati residents don’t want to admit the inevitable demise of their homeland is coming. The filmmaker shows the tribulations one family went through relocating to New Zealand.
Efforts to hold back the sea with sandbags have been largely unsuccessful. The film shows a prototype of a futuristic, vertical encasement for an island nation that could be built in the middle of the ocean. But each tower would only be capable of holding 30,000 to 50,000 people, and it would cost billions of dollars to build one for Kiribati.
“Climate change is the greatest moral challenge for humanity,” Mr. Tong states in the documentary. “We haven’t risen to the challenge.”
Mr. Clark-Phelps ended the OurNEST event with a quote from 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, when she spoke at a TEDx symposium in Stockholm last December.
“The one thing we need more than hope is action,” she said. “Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.”
First Published September 26, 2019, 11:30 p.m.
