Page - 373 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

15 UnderstandingLossandDamage inPacificSmall Island… 373 versible loss is prominent as people are abandoning low-lying homes and villages given the increase in stormsurges andhigher tides, and risingwater and food inse- curity. Someof the earliest cases of climate change-linkedmigration in thePacific are theCarteret Islands (PapuaNewGuinea) andVanuaLava inVanuatu, and the plannedrelocationofTaro,theprovincialcapitalofChoiseulProvinceintheSolomon Islands.Inthiscase,wecouldarguethatthesecommunitieshavetosomeextentfaced anadaptation limit, and that such “intolerable” losswould include irreversible loss where the people and communities have little option but to leave or abandon the places where they currently live and the kinds of lives they lead in that physical environment.Nevertheless, relocationinthesecaseshasbeenvoluntary. In thecases ofTaro there is, and for theCarteret Islands therewas, considerableplanning (even though the relocation is widely seen as a failure). In preparation for muchmore populationmovement,Vanuatu, in conjunctionwith the InternationalOrganization forMigration (IOM),hasdevelopedadraftNationalPolicyonClimateChangeand Disaster-InducedDisplacement (Vanuatu&IOM2017). Theemphasisofoptionswhenfacedwith intolerable risk, ison involuntary relo- cation (Fig. 15.2). However, transformative actionmight also be possible through migrating or taking seasonalwork elsewhere. Remittances from relativesworking elsewhereinVanuatuoroverseasarealsoapossibility,althoughcurrentlysuchoppor- tunities forSouth-WestPacificislandersare limited.Yet, remittances inparticular in thePacific regionare amajor sourceof incomeandamajor enabling factor inhow communitiescancontinue to thriveeven indifficultcircumstancesandpost-disaster settings (Brown 2015). Aid, remittances, modern communication technology, and local structuralengineeringandchangescanenablecommunities to reside inplaces where otherwise they could no longer sustain themselves (Handmer andMustelin 2013; Jameroet al. 2017). 15.3.3 CaseStudy:TropicalCyclonePamin2015 asanExampleofCopingwithCurrentRisk ManyPacific Island countries are especially prone to disaster triggered by climate andweatherevents, forexample,Vanuatuhas longrankednumberoneontheWorld Risk Index (Birkmann et al. 2011; Garschagen et al. 2015). As extreme events in thePacificare frequent, attribution ismorecomplex.The2015Category5Tropical Cyclone (TC)Pamwas the secondmost intense tropical cyclone ever in theSouth Pacificbasin (Fig.15.3). The lackofbaselinedata is also relevant here: for example after the cyclonehit, althoughdamage assessments and estimationswere done (Government ofVanuatu 2015),providingaclearfigureoninformal lossanddamagewasverydifficultas the latestpopulationcensuswasdonein2009andthefullextentofassetdamageislargely unknown (Barber 2015; Nalau et al. 2017b). Nevertheless, there were significant impactsonmost sectorsof theeconomy, inparticular foodcrops, infrastructureand