Localised reactions to the challenges of climate change: Comparing language policy in Kiribati and the Republic of the Marshall Islands

This paper considers the responses of two low lying Micronesian nations, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and Kiribati, to the effects of ongoing climate change. Whereas Kiribati has bought land in high lying areas... [ view full abstract ]

This paper considers the responses of two low lying Micronesian nations, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and Kiribati, to the effects of ongoing climate change. Whereas Kiribati has bought land in high lying areas in Fiji and launched the “Migration with Dignity” policy, the Republic of the Marshall Islands has no official emigration policy, relying instead on awareness raising, political lobbying and climate change activism. We comparatively explore the impact of migration policy on official language policies of these two nations, zooming in on two areas where such policy decisions are in the process of change: (i) the educational system and (ii) the linguistic landscape.

• The Kiribati Migration with Dignity strategy contains an explicit English language provision which aims to improve language competency in order to facilitate migration to English-speaking nations, especially New Zealand and Australia. The RMI government, by contrast, has recently introduced a language education policy reform which aims to strengthen the ethnolinguistic identity of the indigenous language, Marshallese. In contrast to these official policies, however, international migration rate from Kiribati remains very low, whereas there has been considerable migration to the USA from the Marshall Islands, enabled by the Compact of Free Association.
• On Kiribati, the linguistic landscape is intimately tied to environmental issues since, at least in rural areas, the majority of texts in the public sphere informs about climate change. In the RMI, while public signage is also dominated by English, the government recently proposed a language policy which requires all public signs to include both Marshallese and English (Marshall Islands Journal 28^th August, 2015).

We explore the reasons which lie behind the differing official strategies, their relationship to everyday linguistic practices, the complexities of their implementation and their possible long term and short term repercussions.