Climate Change Impact and Structural Reforms in Kiribati
KIRIBATI
CLIMATE CHANGE IN KIRIBATI: THE WAY FORWARD¹
Climate change represents a threat to many small island developing states like Kiribati. This note
summarizes the main ways in which climate change may negatively affect the economy of Kiribati. It
then shows how Kiribati may cope with these negative effects by implementing adaptation projects, as
well as by contributing to global mitigation efforts. Finally, the note describes some issues related to
climate finance and how authorities of Kiribati may direct their efforts in the most productive way to
ensure that climate-related projects obtain the proper financial backing and are carried out to fruition
in a timely fashion.
A. Introduction
1. The negative effects of climate change threaten the future of the world economy.
According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR-6 Report (IPCC, 2022), the
negative effects of anthropogenic climate change have already started to materialize across the
globe. The global average temperature will almost certainly rise to 1.5 degree Celsius above
pre-industrial levels in the coming decades, even if the world economy were to implement policies
to aggressively reduce carbon emissions starting from today. Accordingly, the risk of runaway
climate change, which most scientists predict to occur if the global average temperature were to
increase to and above 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, is deemed very high.
2.
Against this backdrop, small island developing states (SIDS) are in a precarious
position. This is because their location and geographic features make them vulnerable to climate
induced disasters like tidal inundation, tropical cyclones, droughts, and heatwaves. In addition,
economies of SIDS are often heavily dependent on natural resources, for instance groundwater and
fisheries, which could be negatively affected by some of these novel natural processes associated to
climate change like sea level rise. Finally, the size and current development of their economies
hinder efforts both to adapt and to recover from natural disasters.
3. Global changes in weather patterns may lead to a host of hazards for Kiribati, albeit a
great deal of uncertainty remains in model-based projections of risk. A rising global average
temperature naturally leads to more frequent occurrence of dangerous heatwaves, including marine
heatwaves-periods of abnormally high sea temperature-which intensify and lead to severely
negative effects on marine ecosystems within Kiribati's exclusive economic zone. Droughts on the
atolls of Kiribati are primarily meteorological, meaning that they reflect a prolonged lack of rainfall
and thus require projections of future precipitation patterns. Finally, inundation and windspeed
damage from storms, while historically not affecting Kiribati as harshly as other SIDS, are tightly
linked to future evolution of tropical cyclone tracks, a field in which more research is needed.
I Prepared by Michele Fornino (STA), Anh Thi Ngoc Nguyen (APD), Cristian Alonso, and Joel Kilpatrick (both FAD). The
note benefitted from inputs and discussions with Natalija Novta (APD).
4 INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUNDView entire presentation