A childhood moment today, an underwater memory tomorrow

“Rising sea level due to climate change is not caused by the activities of small countries like mine but a result of the actions of bigger countries. While it may not affect them directly, the impact of climate change is affecting our people ten times more.”

Kaselehlie! My name is Skylar Clark and this is my story of how rising sea level is slowly swallowing my island home, taking with it my childhood memories and my father’s ancestral home.

I am a seventeen-year-old high school student living in Pohnpei, one of the four states in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and every time someone talks about climate change, my heart sinks, just like some of these islands in Micronesia.

Let me share a story about Pingelap, an island located around 285km east of Pohnpei with over 140 inhabitants. While we may have heard of countries that will be under water in another 50 years, Pingelap’s fate may unfold sooner, and the situation here is even closer to my heart because both my parents are from this part of Micronesia.

My father’s family home is in Pingelap where he grew up, and I visit the island during Summer and Christmas breaks. In the last eleven years I have seen the situation go from bad to worse, the places where my father once used to play are now memories underwater.

But the issue around sea level rise does not end here. It is even worse with the current drought conditions affecting FSM. Pingelap is a small island and there are no rivers where people could fetch water from. They only have wells and rainwater. When there is no rain, they depend on wells, and saltwater intrusion is impacting access to drinking water from the wells.

Children and families now rely on coconuts as a source of drinking water, but due to the worsening impacts of climate change, I am worried that in another ten years, these coconut trees may not be able to produce enough for people to depend on.

Supplies are transported to the island via ship, which only goes there twice a year. If supplies are missed by one ship, people have to wait until another ship is scheduled, which is probably towards the other half of the year. Another way to reach the island is through flights and due to recent instances of plane crashes, now there is very limited access to the island.

Things are happening more quickly now than what I used to experience when I was little. Within the last eleven years that I have been visiting the island, I can see that the situation is getting dramatically worse in terms of rising sea level affecting people’s livelihoods. Where once they did not have any climate issues, things are taking disastrous turns as each day unfolds in Pingelap.

Dear leaders, this is just one story from one island in Micronesia, but there are many small islands in other countries that may be facing similar issues.

If you do not take climate action now, then one day my father will lose the place filled with his childhood memories, I will not have a place to go back to during my school breaks, and my future generation might never know that an island called Pingelap ever existed in the Federated States of Micronesia.