The Marshall Islands’ Sweeping Climate Adaptation Plan with Jake Bittle
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2024
⏱️ 43 minutes
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Summary
Last month, at COP28 in Dubai, the Republic of the Marshall Islands unveiled its sweeping national climate adaptation plan, the multi-year product of government officials interviewing thousands of Marshallese residents across the country’s dozens of coral atolls.
The plan is ambitious and groundbreaking because it has to be. As John Silk, foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, said in September, “We call it our national adaptation plan, but it is really our survival plan.”
Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Jake Bittle, a staff writer at Grist who covers climate impacts and adaptation and the author of a recent book about climate migration called “The Great Displacement,” about this very plan, which Jake obtained ahead of the annual climate conference. They discussed what makes this particular climate adaptation plan revolutionary, the thorny geopolitics of climate financing, and the unimaginable, unquantifiable loss that might occur should the worst case scenarios come to fruition for the Marshallese. But they also talked about why, despite its dire warnings and existential subject matter, the plan’s creators ultimately see it as an optimistic document.
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Transcript
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| 0:27.0 | They figured out a way to create a really educated and informed set of binary choices |
| 0:40.0 | about how to protect or not protect the country, which allows them to show, I think, the funding |
| 0:45.7 | community, the donor countries, if you will, what it is that they're funding or not funding, |
| 0:50.9 | right? |
| 0:51.9 | So it's very easy for countries to come and get on a |
| 0:54.1 | dais and say it's life or death, it's life or death. It's harder for them to |
| 0:57.8 | produce a document that you know they submit and that the UN ratifies that it's life or death. |
| 1:05.0 | It's life for death for this island and this year. |
| 1:08.0 | It's life for that island and that year. |
| 1:10.0 | It's potentially already been life for death for this other island or this other at all |
| 1:13.9 | I'm Tyler McBryan managing editor of Law Fair and this is the Law Fair podcast |
| 1:19.1 | January 5th 2024. Last month a cop 28 in Dubai the Republic of the Marshall Islands |
| 1:26.0 | unveiled its sweeping national climate adaptation plan the multi-year product of |
| 1:29.8 | government officials interviewing thousands of Marshallese residents across the country's dozens of coral atolls. |
| 1:35.0 | The plan is ambitious and groundbreaking because it has to be. |
| 1:38.0 | As John Silk, foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, said in September, |
| 1:42.0 | quote, we call it our national adaptation plan, but it is really |
| 1:45.6 | our survival plan. I sat down with Jake Biddle, a staff writer at Gris who covers climate impacts |
... |
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