top of page

'Our country will vanish': Pacific islanders bring desperate message to Australia

“Like a drop of water in a bucket, on its own is small, but if there are many, many drops, soon it is overflowing.”

Erietera Aram’s water analogy is apposite. His country faces being lost under the waves of the Pacific Ocean.

The i-Kiribati man is in Australia delivering his message about the reality of climate change in his country, and of its immediacy. Each discussion, he says, is like a drop of water, adding to the one before it, slowly building understanding of the existential threat to his people and place.

“Climate change is not something off in the future, it’s not a problem for later. We are living it now,” he says.

The archipelago of Kiribati – 33 tiny coral atolls spanning 3.5m square kilometres of ocean – is the world’s lowest-lying country, with an average height above sea level of just two metres.

World Bank Photo Collection

bottom of page