Sea Level Rise, Environmental Justice, and The Windup Girl

          In the documentary The Island President, a news anchor at the 15^th Conference of the Parties (COP15) asked Mohammed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives, if his country had any backup plan in the event that the climate negotiations in Copenhagen failed.  His response: “None.  We will die”.  Nasheed’s nation, the Maldives, encompasses roughly 2,000 small islands located in the Indian Ocean.  This developing country boasts a population of approximately 400,000 people, teems with oceanic biodiversity in the form of coral reefs, and maintains a robust tourism industry for the rich and famous.  The people of the Maldives have lived here for thousands of years in equilibrium with the ocean.  However, anthropogenic climate change has already begun to interrupt this peaceful equilibrium.  The Maldives average 4 feet and 11 inches above sea level.  Their highest point barely reaches 8 feet above sea level.  If the world does nothing to mitigate climate change, climate scientists have predicted that the resulting rise in sea levels will completely engulf the Maldives, destroying an entire national identity and creating hundreds of thousands of climate change refugees.  The plight of the Maldives begs the question of whether the wealthier, more powerful, high emissions countries that are contributing heavily to climate change are obligated to aid the Maldives and other less developed, poor island nations as they begin to feel the effects of climate change.

Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl is set in 23^rd century, post-climate change Thailand.  Sea level rise seems to be the most drastic change in the post climate-change world; while the rising sea has destroyed many developing nations, Thailand struggles to maintain itself with a system of levees and sea walls that use a pumping mechanism to pump the rising sea underground.  Developed nations and their “calorie corporations”, such as AgriGen and PurCal, have also exploited developing nations in this post-climate change world.  The developing nations like Thailand constantly struggle with new “genehacked” diseases, food shortages, and pests.   The book constantly alludes to a better life in the US and the fact that the US has a monopoly on the grain and rice market.  Even post-climate change, the global North has continued to exploit the global South instead of feeling the moral obligation to help them combat and adapt to climate change, disease, and agricultural pests.  The futuristic Thailand in the novel is also home to thousands of poorly-treated Chinese refugees, called “yellow cards”, that seem to have come into the country after being massacred in their own country (possibly for scarce resources).  This could be what happens to the citizens of the Maldives once their entire nation drowns under the rising ocean and they must ask other countries to take them in as climate change refugees.  More broadly, this exploitation and lack of moral concern for the global South mirrors Mohammed Nasheed’s situation in the Maldives.  Or better yet, it is the potential future of the global South post-climate change. 

The current real-life situation in the Maldives and the potential future that awaits the global South in The Windup Girl beg the question of what responsibilities the global North has to aid the global South, if any.  The global North is constantly blamed (and in my opinion, rightly so) for international environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and climate change.  As the creators of the problem and as the wealthier half of the world, many believe that the North is obligated to mitigate their emissions and aid nations such as the Maldives with climate change adaptation (infrastructure, clean water, etc).  Others may argue that in doing this, the North is imposing their will on the South and now allowing them to develop their economies and go through the same industrial process as the North did in the early 1900s.  Yet others may argue that the North has no obligation to help the South at all.  In my opinion, the North should be required to mitigate their emissions and aid the South not just with adaptation efforts, but with sustainable economic growth and focuses on things like research and development of clean energy and better infrastructure for public transport.  In this way, the North will be responsible for their emissions and will allow the South to have the opportunity to develop their economies, albeit in a more sustainable manner.  Hopefully, in this way, we can avoid the post-climate change future presented in The Windup Girl.