Chapter 12

Shifting Tides: Climate Change, Migration, and

Agency in Tuvalu
转向的潮流：图瓦卢的气候变化，迁移，以及主体性
 本研究探讨的主要问题

Migration and Relocation 迁移

• Are often presented as possible responses and adaptations for the

affected populations

• Are not considered favorable outcomes in Tuvalu, both at the level

of government and among citizens

Resistance—— not a denial of climate change, but a historically

response to externally imposed ideas about Tuvalu’s vulnerability as a
small island nation.
 本研究关切
人类学视角下的迁移：注重文化与历史情境、当地人观点基于团体的
需要与优先考虑。

An anthropological perspective on migration in response to climate change.

• Situating population mobility in cultural and historical contexts.
• Disentangling local views from externally imposed assumptions and
discourses
• Examining community-based needs and priorities in responses to climate
change.
Part 1. Tuvalu and Global Climate Ch
ange
基本情况——地理位置和岛
屿构成
Part 1. Tuvalu and Global Climate Ch
ange
基本情况——地质地貌
Part 1. Tuvalu and Global Climate Ch
ange
关于地质、资源和环境的历史回顾

• Settled by Polynesian seafarers from elsewhere in the Western

Pacific between 800 and 2000 years ago.
• When sea levels fell during a small ice age and exposed the a
tolls.

有限的资源：
• Limited land resources ( sparse alkaline coral sand soils cov
ered only by a thin layer of accumulated vegetable deposit. )
• Freshwater is also unevenly distributed and limited.
Part 1. Tuvalu and Global Climate Ch
ange
叙事、故事与传说
• Narratives, stories, and legends
Tell of how islanders endure the challenges of daily at
oll life and survive droughts and storms.
&
Provide analogies for explaining and coping with contem
porary disruptive geological and environmental processes.
Part 1. Tuvalu and Global Climate Ch
ange
与西方的接触史
• In the 19th and 20th centuries, European interest in the is
lands went through periods of growth and decline.
1)Whaling and copra production generated short-lived int
erests.
2) Protestant missionaries gained footholds on each isla
nd.
3)American forces established defenses on Funafuti, Nuku
fetau, and Nanumea at the frontline of WWII.
Part 1. Tuvalu and Global Climate Ch
ange
从成为英国殖民地到获得独立以及当前经济状况
• 殖民时期： Then named the Ellice Islands, came under British rule i
n 1889.

• 获得独立： Independence came in 1978.

national government: a parliamentary democracy with a prime minist
er and representatives from each of the originally inhabited eight i
slands.

• 经济状况： Economy is now dominated by migration, remittances, aid,

and bureaucracy.
• Growing importance of a cash-based economy—— 》 heavy urbanization
to the capital on Funafuti ( the international airport, wharf, gove
rnment offices, and a growing retail sector offer economic opportu
nities) . Burgeoning economy and increasing population density.
Part 1. Tuvalu and Global Climate Ch
ange
研究的对象与聚焦：当地人对环境变化的观察和本地反应以
及风险认知、未来期待。
• Interviews conducted in 2006 with Tuvaluans who hav
e spent their lives observing and interacting with
the environment.

• Focused on:
observations of changes in the sky, sea, and land;
local responses to extreme weather events such as s
torms, droughts, and floods;
risk perceptions and expectations of the future.
Part 2. Migration as a Response to C
limate Change?
不断增长的危机和迁移动力的缺乏
• Be labeled as the world’s first “climate refugees” since
the 2000s.

• The increasing effects of climate change and shadows of unce

rtainty.
• Lack of motivation for a national conversation about migrati
on, either within the government or among citizens.
• Tuvaluans resist the normative assumption that rising sea le
vels equate them to being landless refugees.
Part 2. Migration as a Response to C
limate Change?
应对气候变化的迁移和全球话语与局外人对脆弱性的忽视
• Migration is both an adaptive response to environmental change and a
driver has lead humans to populate all areas of the globe.
• 全球化下的迁移： In the globalized world, the push and pull factors i
n driving people to migrate are multifaceted. ( Social, political, e
conomic and environmental motivations)
• 环境灾害的复杂性与社会建构性： Environmental catastrophe is highly co
mplex and socially constructed.
在环境与社会、文化的相互关系和交融中理解脆弱性： Vulnerability is th
e conceptual nexus that people have with their environment to social
forces and institutions and the cultural values that sustain or conte
st them,
局外人和全球话语关于迁移的讨论中，脆弱性原因分析没有受到足够的重视：
Outsider and global discourses about migration in the face of climate
Part 2. Migration as a Response to C
limate Change?
图瓦卢人的迁移和应对气候变化的迁移
• Migration( permanent, temporary, and circular) happening
independently of climate change.
Remittances sent home from Tuvaluans living and working
overseas.

• 图瓦卢人对气候变化迁移的抵制： Tuvaluans deep resistance

to migration in response to climate change
Demonstrated by a lack of migration planning at the nat
ional level and by representative quotes from Tuvaluans.
Part 2. Migration as a Response to C
limate Change?
当地人怎么说？
Part 3. The Importance of Home

• Tuvalu’s response to climate change is unfolding at hom

e and abroad as national leaders participate in UNFCC of
COP in paris in 2015.
Prime Minister: “ Our survival as a nation depends on
the decisions we take at this conference.
 Part 3. The Importance of Home
国家历史的回顾
可以看出图瓦卢人的家园，国家和文化身份之间的稳固联结
• A review of Tuvalu‘s short national history helps explain this
abiding connection between home, nation, and cultural integrity
even for a population whose past and present are characterized
by mobility.

Before 1978——the colonial period

known as the Ellice islands, is part of GEIC.
Unease between the Polynesian islanders of the Ellice Islands
and their northern Micronesian neighbors in the Gilbert Islands.
Simmered throughout the 1960s and boiled over in the 1970s, resu
lting in Tuvaluans’ secession from the Colony.
Part 3. The Importance of Home
国家历史的回顾
• Education differentiation—— 》 the widening opportunity
gap between the groups planted seeds of dissent.

• Tuvaluans took a stand of separation before political in

dependence occurred at the political consciousness ad fe
ar of the approaching possibility of the political indep
endence from Britain, which could possibly leading them
to become a disenfranchised minority in a new country fo
rmed from the GEIC.

• A referendum in 1974
 Part 3. The Importance of Home
民族历史的回顾
• The terms offered the newly formed nation a bare minimum, which
shows that Britain was trying to dissuade Tuvaluans from voting
for separation.

• 图瓦卢这个又小，又隔离，又缺乏资源的国家在世界舞台上的生存问题：
International observers accused Tuvaluans of being overly ambit
ious and taking on an impossible role.
• 形成鲜明对照的是图瓦卢人对此坚定不移： A strong desire of Tuvalu
ans for a separate country.
图瓦卢人对文化身份和政治抱负的优先化： Tuvaluans had conspicuous
ly prioritized their cultural identity and political aspirations
over material security and other measurements of legitimacy impos
ed by Eurocentric expectations
这一与 Gilbert Islands 的政治分离是在什么情境下发生的： When prop
ortionally more Tuvaluans lived away from home than ever before o
Part 3. The Importance of Home
国家历史和国家身份
• Became an independent country on October 1, 1978.

• 这个时候的内涵于地域合法性中的国家主义
Became more than the expression of cultural coherence, it becam
e legalistically inscribed in place.

创造新的空间和神话的元叙事： Grupta( 1997) : “Nationalism as a

distinctively modern cultural form attempts to create a new kind
of spatial and mythopoetic metanarrative, one that simultaneously
homogenizes the varying narratives of community while, paradoxica
lly, accentuating their difference.”

跨越地域的团体和文化认同 island communities and cultures hae come

together
面对气候变化被强化了的国家身份 the national identity is being sol
idified in opposition to the forces of climate change.
Conclusion
为什么图瓦卢人抵制气候迁移呢？
• 基于国家历史
• 进行类比：图瓦卢人过去表达他们对分离出来的独立的家园的渴望与
图瓦卢人对气候引发的迁移的抵制。
• national identity & agency

• “ 气候迁移”（ climate migration) 与 “气候难民”（ climate

refugees) 的话语的局限性。
• 岛民的视角 ( islander perspectives) 和优先事项 ( prioritie
s) 对于适应选择 ( adaptation options) 的重要性： Adaptation
options that do not fully engage with islander perspectives
and priorities risk “adapting” to the very systemic vulne
rabilities that render Tuvaluans’ futures particularly pre
carious.
Conclusion
• 图瓦卢的案例展示给我们想象出新的民族、国家的元叙事，维护
自己的国家身份，是气候变化问题给人们带来的重大挑战之一。
• 图瓦卢的文化整合性。
• 面临不断加剧的气候变化危机，图瓦卢人将何去何从？

Tuvaluans’ story illustrates how one of the major challe

nges of climate change includes imagining new metanarrati
ves of nation, ones in which cultural integrity can be ma
intained in ways that may not be so tied to “this spot i
n the Pacific Ocean”( Field 2014) .