Breaking Green

The Marshall Islands: Between Nuclear Colonialism and Climate Crisis with Shem Livai

• Global Justice Ecology Project / Host Steve Taylor • Season 5 • Episode 5

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The Marshall Islands face dual threats from the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing and the advancing impacts of climate change, creating an urgent struggle for justice and survival.

On this episode of Breaking Green we are going to speak with Shem Livai.

Shem Livai is a Director at Marshalls Energy Company in the Marshall Islands. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Leadership for Innovation and Change from the University of the Virgin Islands, he has an MBA from the University of the South Pacific, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Hawai‘i. 

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by Global Justice Ecology Project. On Breaking Green, we will talk with activists and experts to examine the intertwined issues of social, ecological and economic injustice. We will also explore some of the more outrageous proposals to address climate and environmental crises that are falsely being sold as green. I am your host, steve Taylor. On this episode of Breaking Green we will be talking with Shem Levi, a PhD student and Marshallese resident. Without consent of the local population, the Marshallese Islands were used in the 40s and 50s by the United States government for nuclear testing. Open-air nuclear testing was done in the continental United States. The testing in the Marshallese Islands was so extensive it required relocation of entire populations. Actually, in 1951, the United States Air Force made a film on the reasons and methods of their nuclear testing.

Speaker 2:

The next day after zero hour. We see the reason for this concentration on the weather jar. We see its relation to the huge fact which remains after every nuclear detonation the atomic cloud, the towering angry ghost of the fireball. The payoff is knowledge of wind speeds and wind directions After the explosion. Air Force helicopters survey and monitor the acres of blast area with sensitive radiation counters.

Speaker 1:

Shem Levi, welcome to Breaking Green.

Speaker 3:

Hello everyone and thank you for having me. It's an honor to share the story of the Marshall Islands and our ongoing struggle for justice, not just climate justice but historical justice.

Speaker 1:

Right. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about the Marshall Islands, where they're located? They are Central Pacific Islands, I believe, but could you help our listeners understand the nature of the Marshall Islands?

Speaker 3:

geographically. Yes, so the Marshall Islands is a quick not a quick, but it's pretty much a four-and-a a half hours flight from Honolulu to Majuro. There's only one flight that goes to the Marshall Islands, which is on United Airlines. So Marshall Islands used to be a US territory back in the days until it gained independence around 1986, I believe. But we do have a close partnership with the United States, which is called the Compact Free Association. This allows our citizens here in the Marshall Islands to travel freely to and from the US without having a green card or visa. This allows our citizens to look for better opportunities in the US, such as employment, medical and education for the kids and young adults. So, yeah, I mean, there's 29 coral atolls and five main islands here and interesting enough is the population used to be around 60,000 back in the 90s and 2000s, but right now I believe the population is really doing down due to high migration citizens going to the United States. Last count was around I believe it was 32,000 to 37,000 citizens now here in the Marshall Islands.

Speaker 1:

In the Marshall Islands. There's a long history of different nations imposing their will upon the islands. Could you give us a brief historical? Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3:

So we first had the Spanish come in first for the world trading during the world trading times. I cannot the the year, I'm not too sure. I think it's the mid-16th century, that's when the Spanish came for oil trading. Then you had the. After the Spanish you had the Germans coming in and they were very interested in copra trading, and copra is pretty much coconut oil. After World War I, which they were gifted, I guess, by the UN, to take over most of the Pacific Islands, and then after World War II, you had the US taking over the control of the islands from the Japanese Empire, the Japanese empire, and this we were talking about around 1946, when the United States took control of the Marshall Islands until 1986, when Marshall Islands finally got their sovereignty and independence in 1986.

Speaker 1:

But you say that the population is dwindling. So what are some of the challenges?

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, of course, as I mentioned, there's three big services that is lacking here in the Marshall Islands I want to say lacking but still needs some development which is education, medical and job security.

Speaker 3:

So these top three things are the main cause of these citizens migrating into the United States for better opportunities, United States for better opportunities. And of course we have, as I mentioned, with the medical, it's a huge contribution from the nuclear testing that's been happening since 1946 to 1958. If a brief history of the Marshall Islands is that nobody, not a lot of people, know about, is between the year of 1946 to 1958, there were close to 67 nuclear weapons that were detonated in our islands, and I'm sure you've heard of the Hiroshima bombs, and the Hiroshima bombs were a lot smaller and with the amount of nuclear testing that was detonated in our islands it's equivalent to 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for 12 years, which is a lot. And of course, with this designation there comes a lot of contamination and pollution into the ocean and into the land, which also contributes to poisoning of our food resources and water resources.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I am familiar with those tests. I even remember colorful magazine covers that were a bit before my time, from that time and them talking about. You know the tests in the Marshall Islands done by the United States military, I think, using Navy ships and all of that. But there was just these open air experiments not experiments, actually detonations of warheads in the area of the islands. I mean, how close were they to the islands?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, most of the testing were exactly on land. They were just bombing islands and some of these islands have disappeared. These bombings, it's not that it happened years ago, but we're still living the consequences of these bombings. I mean, they're not going to go anywhere away anytime soon, they're going to be here with us forever and we still need some assistance from the US. There's a lot of politics involved, with the US and our government trying to resolve this issue of cleaning up the contamination. Resolved this issue of cleaning up the contamination and it's a bigger test than what was anticipated.

Speaker 1:

So did they remove the population, or were people just present when it was done?

Speaker 3:

There's no doubt people who were left on the islands or left near the bombing sites were definitely left there for a purpose. Sadly to say, they were definitely used as guinea pigs during the testing times. Have these scientists going into the island population and conduct testing and even flying some of these islanders Marshallese, you would say to the United States to conduct extensive research on the aftermath of what a bomb would do to a human body?

Speaker 1:

How much radiation is left over?

Speaker 3:

There's still radiation and it won't go away anytime soon. There's still radiation and it won't go away anytime soon. It's very sad because some of these islanders or Marshallese that were living in those islands they still cannot, because land is very sacred here. There's not much land in the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands is definitely not abundant with land, so, sadly, some of these two island groups I would say two island atolls that still haven't returned to the island due to contamination, which is Rogelup Peas. And then we have the Bikinians, who have been in exile for, um, yeah, almost 70, 80 years now. But, yeah, many of these people are still living with the trauma and consequences of the nuclear colonialism. The entire islands, like Bikini, remain unhandable. Generations have grown up in exile on land not their own, with health issues passed down and, yeah, sadly it's not history, but it's their present. It's not going away, they're living it day to day. It's not something that happened yesterday, it's an ongoing issue that they face every day.

Speaker 1:

So when you say some people are living in exile, are they in other islands in the Marshall complex?

Speaker 3:

They are living in islands, in the Marshall Islands that were basically uninhabited. Uninhabited, I mean some of these islands you can't even grow food on, like vegetables or bear fruits. So there are stuff on islands that cannot bear fruit for them to be sustainable or able to provide food for them to be sustainable or able to provide food for them.

Speaker 1:

Is there a sense that there should be more recognition by the United States or more awareness about this?

Speaker 3:

awareness, uh, about this, um, that's a good question because, like I said, it's really ongoing um issue and still, um, it has not come to a positive end to it. Um, a lot of politics involved. They've been going back and forth. Of course, the US does not want to acknowledge that they're at fault, but they yeah, I can go on and on. There's still some compensation that was not fulfilled by the US. We're talking millions of dollars that were supposed to be given out to the families who were affected by the bombing, by the nuclear bombs.

Speaker 3:

Sadly, most of these people who were affected by the nuclear bombs, like they actually had health issues, cancer. They actually had health issues, cancer. They've all passed away and now they have. Some of them didn't have kids because of the cancer they had. Sadly, some of the females, they couldn't bore any kids because of the cancer in their body. It wouldn't allow them to procreate. It's a very dark past that some people don't want to talk about. Some still want to seek justice, still want to seek justice and it's just very, very hard to get justice when a country that is ten or million times stronger than you. It's a. It's a hard fight. It's not a winning fight for just a small nation trying to seek justice when it's up against a titan like the United States.

Speaker 1:

So I think you used the term nuclear colonialism.

Speaker 3:

Correct.

Speaker 1:

One of the reasons we wanted you on the show was to actually talk a bit about climate change too, and the effects on these islands in the Pacific. Tuvalu was going to be one of the first islands to have its population removed because of rising sea level. Do you know anything about that?

Speaker 3:

I mean Tuvalu is no different than the Marshall Islands. There's four atoll nations in the world, which consists of the Marshall Islands, tuvalu, kiribati and then you have the Maldives. When I say atoll nations, these nations are not made out of islands, but atolls, islands but atolls. So we're all facing the same issues with climate change. I mean, we all are going through the climate change threats. We're not just losing land, but we're losing our identity, culture and our future. I mean, once the island's gone, once we all relocate to another country, it won't be the same.

Speaker 3:

Majuro now has lost 40% of its land mass. It's already below sea level. Saltwater intrusion is already destroying crops and freshwater sources. Freshwater lenses, coastal erosion and king tides are becoming more severe and more usually, king tides happen during the early, I believe, november to February, around the winter's time, but now they're becoming frequent. They happen either every month or every other month and it's scary. Out there, a lot of people are using their homes. So, yeah, like for us, climate change is not a future threat, it's a daily reality. I mean, we're watching our cemeteries wash away, our crops fail, our freshwater wells turn salty. It is just. This is not just an environmental collapse, it's a cultural erasure.

Speaker 1:

Describe an atoll a little bit. I mean, it's different than an island. There's coral, there's an inner lagoon. Could you explain what an atoll is?

Speaker 3:

The atoll is basically a ring-shaped coral reef. It's typically formed when a volcanic island subsides and the surrounding coral reef grows upward to form the ring with a lagoon in the center where the islands once existed. So we have around, I believe, 24 of those atolls, and it's great because in the lagoon is where we would sail and go back and forth to each islands, and then we have the lagoon side, the ocean side. The ocean side is more rough whereas open ocean.

Speaker 1:

So what in common do the Tuvalu and the Marshallese have in common now with climate change? You were saying the Marshallese are leaving. People from Tuvalu are leaving as well.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, of course I'm not too sure if our facilities here are better than what Tuvalu has, but definitely the influx in migrants from Tuvalu. They're definitely here for employment. But, like I said, tuvalu and Marshall Islands are atoll nations and we're facing the same issues with climate change, with king tide, erosion, erratic weather changes, droughts. So when it comes to nature, and we have the same atolls per se, so how dire how hard is climate change impacting?

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, like I mentioned they With the coastal erosion and king tides. They affected a lot of the crops, the freshwater wells homes, homes that are next to the coastal areas. We've seen a lot of changes with our bread, fruits, the coconuts. They don't grow as well as back then. There's some crops that we used to rely on don't grow anymore, so we are more dependent on imports, such as canned food and outside food sources from stores, instead of relying more on our crops.

Speaker 1:

You used the term nuclear colonialism. Does it make sense to talk about climate colonialism? Is there a similarity?

Speaker 3:

And with the nuclear colonialism that we've been facing for many, many years now with the same, with climate change, it has affected a lot of the local people. Change it has affected a lot of the local people and that's caused them to migrate and move elsewhere?

Speaker 1:

Do you think it's just part of the United States' plan to let things collapse and the Marshallese people disperse and then you know you don't have to address history?

Speaker 3:

people disperse and then you know you don't have to address history. I don't really like to think it. I really want to be positive about it. I just hope that in the near future, I mean things will be. But yeah, I mean, we in the Marshall Islands are very resilient. There's so much ties to the islands that many of us don't want to leave. This is our home and this is where we feel comfortable and we rather live our lives here in the islands instead of being nomads in the US and working away and paying taxes and just. I've been to the US. I've contemplated moving my family to the US, but every time we go there it's just very depressing. I would say there's a lot of money, involvement, a lot of money talk like taxes, bills, but here in the Marshall Islands there's not much of that. But you're just living the life and it's pretty laid back and not very stressful that I would say compared to the life in the United States.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about you a little bit. You're pursuing a doctorate, a PhD. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I'm going to the University of Virgin Islands. It's been a few years now. I've been working on my paper, which is titled Creative Leadership Approaches that Enable Transformative Climate Adaptation Pathways in the Republic of the Marshall Islands Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Speaker 1:

Well, let me ask you this, Shem Do you think people in the Marshallese Islands have hope that climate change is going to be addressed in any meaningful way.

Speaker 3:

I mean, we're definitely not going to give up our islands. We are trying our best to keep our islands as is. But if relocation becomes inevitable, it must be done on our terms, with dignity, justice and full recognition of our sovereignty. There's nothing more. But we do not want to be just migrants.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, shem Levi, for joining us on Breaking Green.

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

You have been listening to Breaking Green a Global Justice Ecology Project podcast, thank you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forests, defend human rights and expose false solutions. Simply text GIVE to 17162574187. That's 17162574187.