How does Pacific Rising work?

Pacific Rising would work on three fronts to preserve lives, livelihoods and cultures in the Pacific:

1) Technology: Investing in renewable energy, Internet access and as-yet undefined systems for raising coastal elevation and shoreline protection

2) Enterprise: Fostering partnerships for sustainable business initiatives at local and national levels in order to bolster the resilience of island economies in transition

3) Culture: Education, training, health and maintaining cultural heritage amid a possible mass migration of people

The four founding member nations are a collection of flyspeck atolls in the middle of the ocean — yet they control vast, resource-rich waters that hold deep-sea minerals and the world’s largest source of tuna. The business-oriented approach to Pacific Rising was purposeful, Stone says, to maintaining these natural resources.

“Inaction would lead to high costs and instability in this part of the planet,” he said. “And the world wants stability in parts of the world where we’re going to be getting resources. So you have to come at this from the business case, because that’s how you get investors’ attention.”

“If you look ahead 50 years, a country like Kiribati could become the first aqueous nation,” Stone continued, raising the possibility of migration. “That is, they own this big patch of ocean, and they administer it from elsewhere.”

The likelihood of island people becoming climate refugees informed the need for investing in education and job training, Stone says. “If people from Kiribati arrive on the shores of Australia in 20 years, they want to be trained and welcomed into society,” he said.