Some Pacific island nations already rely on remittances from citizens working abroad, and climate change could increase this dependence.
Coastlines are eroding, taro patches are being ruined, and houses are flooding due to saltwater intrusion caused by climate change.
The lack of habitable land and the potential for resource conflicts may force Pacific islanders to seek relocation in developed countries.
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Some countries' economies already depend on remittances from islanders who have gone abroad to find jobs, and climate change could swell those numbers. Meanwhile, villages have already been evacuated from low-lying areas in Vanuatu and the Carteret Islands of Papua New Guinea.
Ben Namakin, an environmentalist and native of Kiribati, says that, in his homeland, saltwater intrusion is already ruining taro patches and spoiling well water, houses are being flooded, coastlines are receding, and a causeway whose beauty he had appreciated since he was a child collapsed last October.
And, as in many such Pacific island nations, there is little higher, habitable land for people to move to.
"I really don't know where they will go," Namakin said in an e-mail interview. "They may move further inland, but the more they do that, they will end up on somebody else's land or reach the ocean on the other side, as the islands are too narrow."
The result could be a resource grab that pushes governments to the breaking point, and a clamor to relocate to developed countries on the Pacific Rim or elsewhere.
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