Tuvalu is ground zero for the global climate crisis. No nation is more vulnerable than this small Pacific country

“I see myself as a climate warrior,” says Gitty Yee, a young climate campaigner from Tuvalu.

“I fight for my country, and I fight for what we believe in. I fight for our right to live, our right to prosper, for our future generations, for our parents, our elders, our ancestors who are buried here – because I don’t want my bones to be buried somewhere else. I want to be buried here. I want to live here because this is home. This is where I feel safe. This is everything to me.”

Tuvalu is ground zero for the global climate crisis. No nation is more vulnerable than this small Pacific country.

It consists of nine low-lying islands and atolls midway between Australia and Hawaii. On current projections, rising seas could inundate much of Tuvalu by mid-century. Already, higher sea levels are having a profound impact, and not merely through coastal inundation and erosion.

Salt water is forcing its way up through the earth. Salinity is destroying traditional crops. Saltwater intrusion is sullying wells that Tuvaluans once relied on for fresh water. Without them, people depend on rainfall for drinking water. Two weeks of dry weather is a drought. Food security Tuvalu once enjoyed is gone. Its people are hostage to imports for survival.

These issues are the focus of The Australia Institute’s new documentary, Save Tuvalu, Save the World. It gives voice to the concerns of young climate campaigners such as Gitty Yee.

Tuvalu, of course, is not alone. The citizens of other low-lying nations such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Vanuatu face the same existential threat. Closer to home, first nations people on the Torres Strait Islands live with the knowledge their homeland could disappear.

The entire Pacific – Australia included – faces a future buffeted by rising seas, intense cyclones, and extreme temperatures caused by climate pollution.

As one of the world’s leading fossil fuel exporters, Australia is culpable. The evidence is overwhelming: to avoid climate catastrophe, the world must stop burning fossil fuels. To limit global temperature rises to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, we should have stopped new oil, coal and gas production years ago.

Yet Australia continues to greenlight projects that will emit vast quantities of greenhouse gases.

Woodside Energy’s North West Shelf Project is a massive carbon bomb. It will add about 90 million tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere annually, equivalent to building 12 new coal-fired power stations. Entire new gas fields will have to be opened to feed it. Despite the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels, it can keep producing liquified natural gas for export until at least 2070.

When did Australia’s government chose to give it the go ahead? At the end of the same week that leaders from the region met in the Solomon Islands for the Pacific Islands Forum. The arrogance and irony is inescapable. What a slap in the face to countries Australian leaders like to call our “Pacific family.”

Vanuatu’s Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu rightly branded it an “internationally wrongful act” at odds with the findings of the world’s highest court.

He knows. Vanuatu led a case that asked the International Court of Justice to consider the obligations nations have to combat climate change.

In July, the ICJ issued its finding. It said climate change “imperils all forms of life” and countries must tackle the problem or face consequences under international law.

The world court advised that nations should set emissions reduction targets in line with the global goal of holding heating to 1.5°C. Australia’s newly-announced targets fall short. In the hearings, Australia sided with major fossil fuel exporters including Russia and the United States, arguing that it was only responsible for domestic emissions – not the harm caused by exports. The court specifically rejected this.

It found that nations could be held liable for their failure to protect the climate system “through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies” – which Australia doles out to the tune of nearly $15 billion a year.

Put simply, Australia can’t dodge responsibility for the fossil fuels it lets companies extract and produce here merely because the fossil fuels are burned elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the ICJ finding is no panacea. It could open the door to future litigation by affected countries. It may influence domestic courts. But that will take time. For Tuvalu and nations like it, time is running out.

Even if the global community manages to keep global heating to 1.5°C, these island countries will suffer further devastation. The reality is the world is approaching a point of no return where the Paris targets become impossible. This would guarantee extreme climate disruption, including sea levels that create a wave of climate refugees. If Australia achieves the level of fossil fuel exports it wants and forecasts, the world cannot escape climate catastrophe.

To avoid the looming disaster, we need a rising tide of public opinion – and collective action more powerful than the swelling oceans.

Governments will only do what’s required if the public demands it, if defying the public involves more pain and consequence than standing up to fossil fuel interests.

Australia is funding mitigation and adaptation works on Tuvalu, while offering Tuvaluans a path to migration under a treaty known as the Falepili Union. It is the least we can do. We owe young people in the region, like Gitty, so much more.

“How would you feel if a country that is meant to help to protect is slowly destroying you, little by little?” she asked me.

“We feel devastated, of course, because this is our home and this is the reality that we are facing.”