Rising seas-drowning cultures: the environmental and cultural complexity of climate change

Despite the urgency of the climate change crisis and the increasing amount of research being undertaken, little is known about the predicament of isolated coastal communities, and the biophysical and especially intangible impacts they are facing. This Comment focuses on the predicament of the Maisin people in Papua New Guinea (PNG), highlighting the environmental and cultural complexity of climate change and the urgent need to support those who are most impacted.

On the last day of 2024, an article in the Guardian reported that tens of thousands of people living in the Gulf province in PNG have been displaced due to rising sea levels (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/31/moving-to-the-mountaintops-rising-seas-displace-tens-of-thousands-in-papua-new-guinea). The article further highlighted how the PNG government is yet to put an effective strategy in place to address problems arising from climate change. Many other communities in PNG, the wider Pacific and elsewhere in the world, are likewise facing the harsh realities of climate change with little or no government or international support. They are among the most affected by rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and resource scarcity, despite contributing the least to greenhouse gas emissions, exemplifying the significant global inequity analysed in “Loss and Damage” discussions¹. Importantly, the realities faced by these nations and their diverse communities encompass a variety of environmental hazards in addition to rising sea levels. These include “marine and atmospheric heatwaves (which increasingly threaten fragile ecosystems such as coral reefs), extreme ocean wave events, heavy precipitation and floods, storms, landslides, drought, severe winds, and wildfire, among others”². While attention has focused mainly on the vulnerability of small island and atoll communities, remote coastal communities face identical threats. The experience of the 3500 Maisin people living on the northeastern coast of PNG exemplify the compound environmental hazards that not only erode villages and livelihoods, but also the social fabric of culture and identity.

The shallow southern beaches of Collingwood Bay in Oro Province are fringed by mangrove swamps behind which a dense rain forest gently rises for about 20 km inland running up against a 3000-m mountain wall. The eight Maisin villages are situated on beaches and sandbars close to river outlets. Far from roads and shipping lanes, villagers rely on subsistence agriculture, fishing, and hunting for most of their daily needs, supplemented by sporadic supplies of store goods mostly paid for by remittances from relatives working in towns. The bush also provides materials for their houses, canoes, and traditional bark cloth art (“tapa”), which is renown across PNG and has long been a modest but important source of income for local people. Mindful of environmental damage elsewhere in the country, Maisin have steadfastly resisted commercial logging on their lands. Considering the intergenerational care for their ancestral lands and their low carbon footprints, climate change is disproportionately impacting Maisin.

The low-lying Maisin villages and gardens are vulnerable to climatic and environmental change as shown in Fig. 1. Over generations, villagers have adapted to periodic droughts, coastal erosion, flooding, and shifting river systems. A strong ethic of mutual care powers collective action when one or another village faces problems. Villagers deploy a variety of techniques to reinforce settlements such as the steady rebuilding of houses closer to the wetlands at the back of the villages, the planting of coconuts to prevent erosion from the coastline and topping up ground levels by depositing sand on lower levels. However, in November 2007, Maisin communities were struck by two cyclones that brought unprecedented, devastating, and accelerated environmental changes.

Fig. 1

Coastal squeeze due to rapidly eroding shores and wetland encroachment between the Maisin villages Sinapa and Sinapara in Collingwood Bay. Drone image by J. Leon, July 2024.

The first was Tropical Cyclone Pierre on the 17th of May in 2007. Although not particularly strong, Pierre foreshadowed what would become the most catastrophic storm event recorded in the Oro Province. Later in 2007, on the 12th of November, a second tropical low formed, this time near New Britain (PNG). The system, unusual for this region, developed as it drifted to the southwest, crossed Oro Province into the Coral Sea and eventually became Category 3 Tropical Cyclone Guba on the 14th of November. This system brought torrential rains for several days to the already saturated soils of the Oro Province and caused widespread flooding and landslides. Miraculously, no Maisin were injured but more than 150 people lost their lives and 2000 were evacuated elsewhere in Oro Province as a 2 m storm surge and swollen rivers destroyed houses, food gardens, bridges, and roads. Guba, however, exposed the vulnerability of southern Collingwood Bay to extreme weather events. A landslide on the northern slope of 3676 m Mt Suckling added to the devastation caused by swollen rivers and high seas. Garden lands and paths were covered by a thick layer of mud, as were village roads, while many houses were undermined and in some areas washed away.

The 2007 storm event was a clear example of a compound event where the extreme impact was a result of a combination of variables leading to cascading and enduring effects. Since then, the underlying impacts of a rapid changing climate, with sea-level rise accelerating even faster than anticipated³ and extreme events becoming larger and more frequent, are putting unrelenting pressure on Maisin communities. As outlined in the following sections, facing challenges like food and water scarcity, increased health risks, resettlement and possible displacement, climate change is effectively threatening Maisin human rights.

Socio-cultural climate change impacts

Ever since Cyclone Guba set a series of environmental disasters in motion, Maisin have been faced with rapidly eroding and sinking villages, lack of clean water due to increased silting, reefs being smothered by sediment-laden rivers, and gardens being inaccessible or destroyed due to repeated floodings. The continuous flooding of gardens, that are located in both lower and higher (normally dryer) inland areas, is of particular concern for food insecurity, but also with regards to women’s health. While men clear lands for gardens, the bulk of garden work, particularly the daily trek to harvest food and collect firewood, falls to women. When already muddy garden paths flood, women have to wade through the fast-running rivers to get to their gardens. As a result, most Maisin women are developping knee and back problems as well as tropical ulcers and other injuries, and many are refraining from making new gardens inland as it is physically too hard and dangerous to access these. Instead, women have resorted to making small gardens immediately at the back of their villages, which barely generate enough food to properly sustain their families. In addition to the widespread food insecurity and health problems, Maisin are having to come to terms with the daunting realization that maintaining their settlements along the coast is rapidly becoming impossible.

While Maisin have tried to stay in their villages as long as possible, building up the ground level and constructing seawalls from organic debris to lessen the impact of the ocean swells and tides, the rapid erosion of the coastline means that sooner or later all Maisin villages will be washed away. The sea has already claimed the most southern village of Marua, while neighboring Airara, Konyasi, and Sinipara villages are rapidly disintegrating, and most of their inhabitants have already been forced to move inland (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

Airara Village has eroded circa 60m since 2010, with half of the village washed away in the last 3 years. Photo by J. Leon, July 2024.

However, as other studies have already indicated, resettling is not a straightforward process⁴. First, there are no roads in Collingwood Bay, nor is there (financial) government or international support to move schools, churches, and aid posts along with thousands of houses and people, including elderly and disabled people⁵. Secondly, most of the 36 Maisin clans lack ownership rights to higher inland ground, leading to difficult negotiations as clans owning the best land balance helping others, with whom they often have deep ties of intermarriage, with ensuring that the future land rights for members of their own clans are secured. In addition to land and clan issues, discussions about resettlement are profoundly shaped by age and gender. While the younger generation has been eager to resettle and many of the most southern Maisin villages have already moved inland into the mangroves or higher up in the mountains⁶, the older generation is reluctant to leave the graveyards and memories of their ancestors behind. As an elderly Maisin woman explained why she didn’t want to resettle: “I was born here, so were my parents and their parents and theirs, so I want to die here” (Interview Sinipara woman, July 2024). As a result, the Maisin villages impacted hardest by sea and river floodings (such as Marua, Airara, and Sinipara) consist mainly of elderly people who are reluctant to leave. This causes loss of social and cultural cohesion, lack of social control and leadership, and consequently law-and-order problems, such as theft of garden produce and violence. Moreover, the resettlement of the mostly young leads to a precarious situation for the elders left behind as they have no one to take care of them and assist with gardening and other chores. Many elderly Maisin complain about the increasing lack of communication between the generations, and how coastal village life has become increasingly hard without the assistance of the youth. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that in villages like Airara, many grandparents are the custodians of their grandchildren who are attending primary and high school, which remain on the coast⁷. In short, the enduring impacts of Cyclone Guba, rapidly rising sea levels, sinking of coastal land and changing weather patterns, do not just affect people’s residence and livelihoods, they undermine Maisin culture in general. This decay is reflected in changes in women’s traditional tapa art.

“Maisin is Tapa”

Maisin people are famous for their distinctive tapa. Made from the bark of the paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera), beaten and painted by women, tapa features in Maisin economic, political, social, and spiritual life as an object of both economic and symbolic wealth. Tapa cloth bearing clan symbols may not be given away outside the clan or sold, and is used as festive and ceremonial dress (see Fig. 3), and part of life-cycle rituals, such as wedding and mourning rituals. Ordinary tapa, bearing exquisite designs, continues to be worn in local ceremonies including church celebrations and in barter and ceremonial exchanges. In short, tapa constitutes beliefs and values about gender relations and identity, mediating relations between the individual and the social, and between the living, the ancestors, and the Church^8,9. For decades, tapa has also served as a significant source of income for villagers, sold as traditional clothing in PNG and as art in the tourist and international art market. As villagers often say, “Maisin is tapa!”.

Fig. 3

Maisin women and men wearing their traditional tapa garments decorated with clan designs during a Church festival in 2001. Photo by A. Hermkens, Tufi 2001.

The production and subsequent use of tapa is under threat due to climate change. It has become increasingly difficult to plant paper mulberry saplings due to repeated flooding of the gardens as the tree does not thrive in boggy and salinized soils. The trees and plants required for making the culturally and symbolically significant red dye that colors the cloth, referred to as tambuta, have also been devasted by flooding. Women and families who still have access to paper mulberry and the ingredients to make the red pigment are no longer willing to share them freely with others. As a result, many women are forced to purchase paper mulberry bark and use commercial store-bought paints to be able contribute to their families’ livelihoods. Consequently, the money generating opportunities for most Maisin women are decreasing, while the symbolic production, exchange and meaning of both tapa and its traditional red dye as “blood” is eroding. Many of the younger women we spoke to in 2024 are no longer aware of the taboos that used to surround the making and use of the red pigment to paint tapa designs¹⁰.

The loss of tapa is already negatively impacting people’s money generating opportunities and economic livelihoods. Especially in the current situation of food shortage, Maisin need money to buy food from extended family members and friends, the local market, or from the few small trade stores that are operating in Collingwood Bay. As a result, the few Maisin women and their immediate families who are fortunate enough to have access to tapa are significantly better off. In addition, the loss of tapa is also affecting life-cycle rituals and ceremonial exchanges and, importantly, peoples’ cultural identity. Contemplating on the current situation and the diminishing role of tapa in reciprocal relations and networks of exchange, several Maisin stated: “We are no long Maisin”.

The Maisin case illustrates how climate change disproportionality impacts vulnerable communities, exacerbating existing and creating new inequalities, and how it violates human rights, posing an existential threat to these communities¹¹. Climate change and disaster events significantly influence Indigenous peoples’ abilities to maintain cultural, gendered practices, such as making tapa and performing ceremonial exchanges, and relationships with ancestors and cultural sites, which are all central to people’s health and wellbeing. Current processes of ad-hoc resettlement already show the impact on gendered forms of well-being, and how some Maisin experience their current status quo in terms of mourning and cultural bereavement¹². Together with Maisin people, we hope to find solutions to the various environmental and socio-cultural issues Maisin are facing, while promoting and creating awareness about safeguarding their livelihoods and unique cultural heritage. One of these solutions is obtain funding to assist each Maisin village with reaching consensus about resettlement locations and the daunting task of rebuilding their villages and communities.