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Topic outline

 

  • Time: 15 hours
    Level: Intermediate

 
 

Introduction

  • Introduction Resource
  • The unit uses the example of climate change to highlight the dynamic and volatile character of the planet, and how globalisation links together, in often unequal ways, people and places across the world....
 

1 Dividing the planet

  • 1 Dividing the planet Resource
  • A good globe can set you back quite a lot of money. Of course, I don't mean the little moulded plastic planets or the globes you can blow up as if the world were a beach ball, but the decent sized ones...
 

2 Island territories, ocean flows

  • 2.1 Issues of responsibility Resource
  • The aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami saw an unprecedented aid effort to assist the affected regions. In the early days after the disaster, pledges of financial assistance from overseas governments...
  • 2.2 Climate change in a globalised world Resource
  • As you will recall from Reading 1A, the people of Tuvalu are now arguing that larger and more affluent nations should take responsibility for the climatic changes threatening their country. As Paani Laupepa...
  • 2.3 Divisions that matter: thinking through territories Resource
  • Without losing our focus on the planet as a whole, it is time now to return to what Paani Laupepa from Tuvalu refers to as the ‘front line’ of climate change: those islands that are particularly vulnerable...
  • 2.4 Worlds in motion: the importance of flows Resource
  • ‘The sea had welled up suddenly through thousands of tiny holes in this atoll's bedrock of coral.’ Do you recall this passage in Lynas's (2003) account of his first days on Tuvalu in Reading 1A? For me,...
 

3 Settling islands

  • 3.1 Voyages of discovery and settlement Resource
  • In Section 2, we saw that there are momentous new and recently transformed flows that are impacting on island territories. Some flows have important precedents, and others may not be quite as novel as...
  • 3.2 Migrations of life Resource
  • As biologist and pioneer environmentalist Rachel Carson once wrote: ‘the stocking of the islands has been accomplished by the strangest migration in earth's history – a migration that began long before...
 

4 Volatile worlds

  • 4.1 When climate changes Resource
  • We have seen that human-induced climate change poses a challenge for people who live on islands. Such changing patterns and extremes of climate also put pressure on the other living things that are part...
  • 4.2 Shifting ground Resource
  • In Section 3 and in Section 4 so far, we have begun with the questions of how and why humans found their way to oceanic islands, and how other living things have come to make themselves at home on these...
  • 4.3 Dilemmas of climate change Resource
  • In Section 4.1, we looked at claims that climatic change thousands of years ago triggered the movement of people into the ocean, eventually leading to the settling of islands like Tuvalu. We have also...
 

5 Conclusion

  • 5 Conclusion Resource
  • The issue of climate change draws attention to the power of human activity to transform the planet in its entirety, and it is brought into sharp focus by the predicament of low-lying islands like Tuvalu....
 

References and Acknowledgements

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