Amid climate crisis and instability, microstates face bleak future

Most micro-island states are exposed to adverse geo-climatic conditions and a number of them are also politically and economically fragile.

Their precarious sovereignty has been contingent upon a benign international system that recognises their independence and has so far assured them of financial aid and emergency support. But the looming climate crisis is exposing them to grave risks at a time of growing instability in the international system. 

Unfortunately, most of them have insufficient resources to deal with the challenges facing them, even as their ethno-linguistic heritage, biodiversity, and, in a few cases, even existence are endangered. They face an uncertain future while major polluting countries quibble over the fine print of climate change agreements. The protracted climate change negotiations and the doubtful efficacy of belated implementation of adaptation/mitigation solutions should encourage exploration of other solutions to the existential crisis facing micro-island states.

Micro-island states – area less than 10,000 sq km and/or population less than one million – can be divided into three major groups located in the Pacific Ocean (10 states), the Caribbean Sea (9 states), and the Indian Ocean (5 states) and a miscellaneous group of 5 states in the Mediterranean Sea, South East Asia, and West/Central Africa. Most of these states cannot resettle their coastal population elsewhere within the country because of their small size, high population densities, and division of territory into widely dispersed low-lying islands. 

Rising sea level threatens to damage their drinking water sources, arable land and coastal infrastructure while rising sea temperature is affecting marine wealth. The increasingly frequent extreme weather events simultaneously affect key sources of income like tourism, fishing, and agriculture. The other sources of income include limited mineral resources, international development aid, and remittances. Small tax bases have pushed governments of some micro states to unusual sources of revenue like sale of diplomatic recognition and immunity, national internet domain name, stamps, and coins; lease of islands for military bases and asylum detention centres; and offshore money laundering. Microstates like Singapore and Bahrain are exceptions.

To make matters worse, the small and often diverse populations of microstates are spread over large areas which makes planning and administration difficult. For instance, Kiribati, the only country situated in all four hemispheres, has about one lakh people inhabiting islands scattered across an Exclusive Economic Zone of the size of India’s landmass. Furthermore, most microstates have seen serious political instability requiring temporary foreign interventions to restore order.
For example, neighbouring countries had to intervene more than once in Vanuatu, which struggles to hold its population of less than a million that is spread over more than 8,00,000 Sq km and that speaks about 110 languages. In fact, even ethnically homogenous Maldives is politically unstable. In short, microstates with unstable governments and limited resources are ill-equipped to face the existential threat posed by climate change.

The way forward

Legal action against major polluting countries is not a feasible option. Microstates lack financial resources and skilled manpower to fight protracted cases against major economic powers, which are unwilling to acknowledge their contribution to climate change. Even if timely compensation is obtained, it might be insufficient to secure microstates against climate change. More over, apportioning compensation among microstates will be difficult.

Gradual depopulation through migration of individuals/families will take people out of harm’s way. But it will endanger languages and cultures by unravelling communities. Besides, even if timely depopulation is achieved, this approach will lead to later conflicts over the nearly abandoned territories. Until the issue of ownership is resolved, policing these islands and their enormous EEZs against poachers, smugglers, and terrorists will suffer due to conflicts between major powers.

Planned resettlement of whole communities elsewhere on purchased land will not help either. Without acquisition of citizenship rights in the destination country, the resettled population will remain citizens of a dysfunctional or non-existent state for an indefinite period. A political merger with another country to mitigate the disadvantage of small size could avoid the shortcomings of above solutions. There are three possibilities: a grand federation of microstates of a region, a federation between a number of microstates and a large state, and federations between individual microstates and large states.

Grand federations are not feasible. Multilateral merger negotiations among similarly sized but ethnically different states can prove to be very divisive and time-consuming due to haggling over power-sharing, state symbols, official language, and the choice of capital city. Furthermore, an assortment of microstates will inherit the resource constraints of individual states and cannot pool risks because prospective constituents face correlated risks.

So, federation is a solution only if microstates join larger states. Microstates stand to gain if they collectively bargain with larger states. But, as mentioned above, multilateral negotiations are complicated. This leaves us with the third option involving bilateral mergers between individual microstates and larger states. A microstate should choose to merge with a large multi-ethnic democratic country that is located close to it in a similar geo-climatic region. The large state should be sufficiently larger in terms of area and economy. It should have an identity-neutral constitution and should have experience in managing island territories in the vicinity of the microstate.

The international community ought to support the proposed mergers as climate change negotiations are gridlocked and microstates do not have reliable long-term aid commitments from other countries. Merger with larger states will mitigate  the political and economic instability of microstates, relieve them of the burden of maintaining the paraphernalia of sovereignty, and provide them with access to larger labour markets and better and cheaper public goods. Most importantly, merger will obviate the need for desperate rescue operations after a catastrophe by allowing preventive relocation of vulnerable communities to safer locations within the federation.

(The writer is Assistant Professor of Economics, Azim Premji University, Bangalore)