Excerpt from Devex
As both COVID-19 and climate change make rural living more difficult in many parts of the Pacific region, British High Commissioner to the Solomon Islands and Nauru Brian Jones said it poses further dangers to the country’s environment. Satellite technology could, however, provide some support.
“With travel restricted, more challenging environmental conditions for growing subsistence crops, and with the promise of the tourism sector now probably a distant dream rather than a more realistic short-term reality … it’s much more difficult to live in rural areas,” Jones explained.
According to the World Bank, the Oceanian nation’s rural population sits at over 75%. And the top industries include tuna fishing, mining, and timber.
But when people are desperate for income — perhaps as a result of COVID-19’s impacts on the country’s tourism and associated livelihoods — they’re more likely to sell their rights to the environment to “unscrupulous extractive industries” at a lower rate, Jones said. If not done with due consideration, this could speed up the effects of climate change on those communities by enhancing soil erosion, enhancing the turbidity of water around those islands, and damaging coral reefs and fish, he added.
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