The atolls of the Marshall Islands are narrow and practically level with the sea, leaving their 68,000 residents nowhere to move to as a rising sea and increasingly frequent floods threatens to swamp the country. Unlike in many parts of the world where climate change often seems a distant threat, for the Marshallese it is already a daily reality.
Keslynna’s grandmother, Rusina Rusin, said the land has been in her family for too many generations to count, passed down from mother to daughter in the country’s matrilineal social system. She said she has noticed the increasing unpredictability of the weather.
“I’ve been living on the ocean so I can see a difference,” Rusin said. I believe it’s an effect of climate change.”
She said the Marshallese are “sea masters,” famed for navigational skills and intimate knowledge of the ocean that allowed them to find and settle the remote atolls thousands of years ago — but now no one can predict what the ocean will bring. Floods suddenly occur without the usual warning signals of storms, rain or wind, Rusin said.
The last flood happened in March; before that in February. But the worst inundation happened in spring last year, when water rushed through Rusin’s home and dragged household items — including Sibok’s prized doll house — out to sea.
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