COUNTY VIEW: Balla and Kiribati — the diverging fortunes of two communities

The last day of this month will mark the 25th anniversary of the ushering in of the new millennium, and nowhere was the occasion more fittingly celebrated than in the town of Balla in the centre of Mayo. That night saw the planting of 2,000 oak trees in the town’s woodlands, an achievement which was remarkable both in scale and imagination.
On the night of December 31, 1999, meticulous planning and community cohesion fused perfectly when even the elements – despite a week of storms, rain and blizzard – turned benign enough to facilitate the efforts.
The Balla Dawn Oak project had its origins two years earlier, when severe Christmas storms had devastated much of the town’s rich woodlands, a feature of the local landscape that went back hundreds of years. It was in its aftermath that retired Garda officer, Stephen Clancy, had the idea of replenishing the woods with 2,000 oak saplings, a legacy for future generations to enjoy.
An eager local committee took the project in hand, all kinds of resources were tapped in support, and when the town’s 300-years-old marching drum started to count down the minutes to midnight, 600 volunteers were ready to spring into action. With clockwork precision, the tree plantings took place within the time allotted to entitle the event to be officially entered into the Guinness Book of Records, and Balla’s contribution to millennium history had been recorded.
Among the thousands of goodwill messages from around the world that day to Balla was that from the island nation of Kiribati, thousands of miles away in the Pacific Ocean. What prompted that message was that Kiribati, a republic which straddles the International Date Line and, as such, was the first nation on earth to welcome the dawn of the new millennium, wished to express its affinity with a community whose reverence for nature was being exemplified by the Dawn Oak plantings.
But the people of Kiribati could hardly have envisaged how the fortunes of the two communities would diverge so much in the ensuing quarter of a century. While the Mayo town has thrived and prospered over those years, the Pacific nation today stands in grave danger of disappearing from the face of the earth.
Many of the 33 small islands that constitute Kiribati are now under threat of rising sea levels, itself a result of global warming and melting ice caps. The lowest lying of these islands, only a few feet above sea level, have already been submerged, their freshwater supplies, and the crops which depend on freshwater, ruined by the sea’s advances.
Mary Robinson, in her book, ‘Climate Justice’, cited Kiribati as one of the most distressing examples of what we are doing to our planet. And well she might. The nation which, 25 years ago, wished mutual blessings and a hopeful future on its friends in Mayo, will now have the dubious distinction of having the first climate-induced relocation of an entire country’s population.
Its leaders have already negotiated the purchase of 6,000 acres of forested land in Fiji, 1,000 miles away, in preparation for the final evacuation of its 113,000 citizens. Its government harbours slim hopes that it might be able to create a necklace of artificial islets – similar to offshore oil drilling platforms – to which some of its population can be moved. But most already recognise such an impracticality.
And the nation’s leader is a realist; his objective is to arrange ‘the dignified migration of his people as their homeland sinks beneath the waves’. It is to that end that Kiribati is encouraging its skilled workers to emigrate to Fiji, where they can integrate into a new homeland and make it easier for the relocation of thousands more, hopefully to be done gradually and without the societal upsets which a sudden influx to a host country could cause.
And all the while, the waters keep on rising. The sea defence walls become more porous; unprecedented sea storms hasten coastal erosion; food production collapses as the salinated earth can no longer produce sustenance for its people.
And by the next millennium, there will be no Kiribati to send words of friendly greeting to the people of central Mayo.