At a time when Queenslanders are inundated with massive flooding, spare a thought for our island neighbours, who are also suffering from these extreme weather events.

Over the last three months, a number of Pacific island countries have seen severe flooding, following a combination of tropical rain depressions, king tides and storm surges.

  • Over 38,000 people were affected by flooding in Papua New Guinea in early December 2008, with the PNG government allocating 50 million kina in relief and recovery funds. Following massive sea swells, over 2,000 houses were destroyed or damaged in provinces along the northern New Guinea coast (including West Sepik, East Sepik, Madang and Morobe provinces) and the Islands region (New Ireland, Manus, and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville).
  • In December, a state of emergency was declared in both the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, as widespread flooding displaced hundreds of people. A combination of 3-metre waves and heavy storms flooded Majuro and Ebeye, the main population centres in the Marshall Islands, which are only a few metres above sea level.
  • For two weeks in January, flooding across Fiji caused 11 deaths and devastated the economy. Fiji’s military-run interim administration declared a state of emergency and imposed curfews to stop looting. Interim Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama said the flooding is the worst ever in Fiji’s history, with direct effects on more than 116,328 people in the Western Division and 30,667 people in the Central Division.
  • In February 2009, Solomon Islands declared a national disaster after eight people died as flooding and torrential rain damaged homes and bridges in 12 communities on the main island of Guadalcanal. Flooding on Guadalcanal and Savo Island led to the evacuation of more villagers to the capital Honiara.

Many climatologists are warning that the floods and fires in Australia are a sign of things to come. Australians will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to recover from the damage and trauma in Victoria and Queensland. But how will our poorer island neighbours pay the bill?

Fiji’s interim government has started tallying the damage from the Fiji floods across all sectors of the economy. As Islands Business magazine noted: “the country’s tourism industry is set to take a battering, with hundreds of tourists caught in the rains likely to be deterred from revisiting the country again in the summer wet season.”

Fiji’s Director of Meteorology Rajendra Prasad has stated: “The January 2009 flood was the worst natural disaster to economically affect Fiji since the [El Nino] drought in 1998 when the loss exceeded F$160 million.”

Australia has contributed $3 million in humanitarian aid to assist people affected by the Fiji floods. But our neighbour’s already battered economy faces massive disruption, with over F$16 million damage to roads and bridges, losses for the sugar cane crop estimated at 68,960 tons, over F$10 million damage to the water reticulation system and millions more for damage to schools and hospitals, electricity and telecommunications infrastructure.

Around the islands region, people are worried that these extreme weather events will increase in frequency and intensity as global warming contributes to long-term climactic change. Just as Black Saturday 7 February brought Victoria’s highest ever recorded temperature, parts of Fiji experienced their wettest January in over a century, with some sites receiving three to four times their normal rainfall for the month. Seven daily rainfall records were broken in January.

At the 1997 Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Rarotonga, John Howard blocked the regional consensus that the countries of Oceania should carry a united voice to the UNFCC meeting in Kyoto. It took a decade for Australia to sign on to the Kyoto protocol. As Australia prepares to host the Forum leaders meeting in Cairns in the first week of August, will we see a different attitude from the Labor government?

Australia’s current policy on greenhouse gas targets does not bode well for our island neighbours, who will be pressing the Rudd government for action in the lead up to the December 2009 Copenhagen climate negotiations.