Low-lying EAO --
'Dives and Lazarus' (actually, Luke has no name for his
rich man:
'dives' is a word meaning 'rich' from the Latin Vulgate) might
have an
interesting application in our region, where 'dives' is more
reminiscent of food-gathering, fishing and maybe coral-reef
tourism.
But it may be a real case of Dives being today's Lazarus, as
many of
our island and low-lying areas already begin to feel the
effects of
king tides and rising sea-levels. Have you ever witnessed a
king tide
on a low-lying island? I have!
Vietnam, China, Pakistan,
Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon
Islands, Fiji, Guam, Samoa
all have a Salesian presence and all are nominated as being
amongst
those will see the likely displacement of between 150-200
million
people within the next 40 years due to a combination of rising
sea-level and increased salt-water intrusion rendering coastal
areas
virtually uninhabitable. Not sure where Korea stands in all
this. Japan
is not considered to have quite that problem (scientists
believe in
fact that there has been the opposite - growth - on the
Western side)
but this year's anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami
(March 11)
hardly leave us confident about geological stability for that
set of
islands either!
We do not have Salesians
permanently present in Kiribati, although the Bishop has been
asking
for Salesians for many years, but i-Kiribati (the term for the
people
of this nation) are to be found in strong cultural groups in
many of
our existing presences, sometimes making up the population of
entire islands where they have migrated (as is the case in the
Gizo Diocese
for Bishop Capelli, for example). Kiribati makes an
interesting study
case of what is likely to happen for some people or peoples in
the
other named countries above.
Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas: there is no written 's' in their
language; instead 'ti' is a phoneme pronounced as 's') has to
be one of
the most unusual countries in the world. It stretches
4,000 kms from
east to west and 2,000 kms north to south, straddling the
Equator, and
is made up of 33 atolls (some say now just 32, to highlight
what is
happening). But 100, 000 people live there, all
Christian, 55% of
which are Catholic. Their Prime Minister is currently in talks
with the
Fiji Government about the relocation of these people to
Fiji. They
already have an entire island, Rabi, which belongs to Fiji but
its
population is largely i-Kiribati. The problems begin to pile
up when
one considers that given the few natural resources available
to people
in these low-lying areas where in many cases soil is permeable
and
largely made up of sand and coral fragments, even small
incremental
changes have a dramatic impact. The fresh-water 'lenses' that
actually
do exist underground are disappearing. Then when people are
forced to
migrate, there is a new human impact as different peoples have
to learn
to get along together.
There's
no end of New Age reflection around on climate change - the
challenge
is to find something more in keeping with New
Evangelisation! Readers
might be interested to know that Blessed Kateri Takakwitha, an
Iroquois
Indian, will be canonised by Pope Benedict XVI this coming
October.
She is described as a 'child of nature. Her sainthood will
raise the
minds and hearts of those who love nature and work in
ecology'.
