Welcome to bruneiONS.com

text . Pauline Chan .

Somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean lies 3 large atolls - Nokunonu, Atafu and Fakaofo - collectively known as Tokelau. Their combined area is about 12 square kilometres and their population is around 1,500. They are situated about mid-way between Hawaii and New Zealand. To get there, you need to take a 37-hour boat ride from Apia, Western Samoa, that's about 480 kilometres.  Yes. That's a long long way to go.

Tokelau, which is administered by New Zealand, has been populated by Polynesians for over 1,000 years and the main languages spoken are Tokelauan, English and Samoan. According to CIA's list of countries by GDP, Tokelau has the smallest economy of any country in the world. Their main exports are copra, woven and carved handicrafts, coins and stamps.

Despite being small in many ways,  Tokelau has a large ambition -  to be the first nation in the world to be powered completely by renewable energy. It is expected that by 2012, 93% of Tokelau's electricity supply will be generated by photovoltaics and the remainder generated by biofuels derived from coconuts.  Tokelau is among the many South Pacific islands nations looking into renewable energy policies and reducing the reliance on fossil fuels.  Their interest is also driven by the threat of rising sea levels as the climate warms and ice sheet melts. This problem is already beginning to inundate other Pacific islands such as Tuvalu, and threatening others such as Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, the Marshall islands, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati.



Tuvalu, consisting of nine low-lying atolls totaling about 26 kilometres, has in the past years, seen 'king tides' rising higher than ever before. Waves have swept over the island's main roads; coconut trees stand partly submerged and small patches of cropland have been rendered unusable because of encroaching saltwater. If rising sea-level predictions prove accurate, sometime in the next 50 years, the ocean could swallow Tuvalu whole, making it the first country in the world to be wiped off the face of the map by global warming.

Tokelau may not have contributed much to the world's greenhouse gas emissions but it's efforts to reduce its carbon footprint is totally commendable, even though it may not have much impact on the brewing cauldron of environmental problems. It can be related to personal, individual efforts that are sometimes brushed off as pointless and deemed to make no difference to the big picture. Tokelau's impact may be minute, at least, they can go ahead and say they had nothing to do with the rising environmental issues and the phenomenon that will eventually inundate it.

Tweet