#island nation

[bluizu]

Favorite country? What are three facts about favorite country?

AJEJWJD

ASHSHAS OMG OMG okay um sorry. um. autism moment.

my favorite country is tuvalu!

fact 1: tuvalu, despite Valu meaning Four in Tuvaluan, is an island nation consisting of nine islands. Tuvalu is most likely the first nation to completely sink due to climate change, with the international community doing little to nothing. if you want to help, go to Tuvalu.tv, and the website will help you from there.

fact 2: there are ca. 13 000 people living in tuvalu, with ca. half of which living on the Funafuti atoll. most of them are English speakers, with tuvalu being a part of the former British colony of the ellice Islands (although that's kinda like calling the US the former 13 colonies), but the main language is Tuvaluan, also known as just Tuvalu.

fact 3: Tuvalu is the country with the least tourists in the world, based on 2021 data. this is likely due to how difficult it is to get there, with it being a country in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of New Zealand and Hawaii. The only planes that go to their singular airport (said airport doubles as a football field) come from Fiji, which is YET ANOTHER island nation!

Bonus fact, because i think this is the funniest shit ever. Basically, after colonization, Tuvalu was kind of low on money, but they still wanted to join the UN. but, with the rise of the internet happening at the time, every country was getting assigned a domain (.se for sweden, .fi for finland, etc). what did Tuvalu get? .tv. so, when different companies (e.g twitch) wanted .tv for their streaming services they have to pay Tuvalu. they used this money to get into the UN. it was honestly dumb luck that they got this domain, but im really happy they did.

edit: sorry, it consists of NINE islands! it's been fixed.

thank you so much for the ask! Tōfa!

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Paul Sandby (English, 1731-1809) The Castle from the Long Walk ca.1765 Royal Collection Trust

[lady-raziel]

I have to hand it to Donald Trump, I didn’t think the sequel to the 1932 Great Emu War would be a trade war against the penguin nation but he truly continues to be an innovator in the stupidity industry

[sillyguy-supreme]

white americans when you tell them that the idea of climate change as an impending disaster is a reductive first world perspective because it’s a tangible reality for many in the global south already:

[tom4jc]

Pray For Timor Leste

Pray for Timor Leste Continent: AsiaCapital: DiliPopulation: 1,379,883% Urban: 31.7%Population under 15 yrs: 37:3 %Official Language: Portuguese (13.5%), Tetum (91%), Bahasa Indonesia (43%)Languages: 19Literacy Rate: 68%Life Expectancy: 67.7 years% Christian: 87.4%% Evangelical: 2.3%Largest Religion: ChristianPeople Groups: 24% Unevangelized: 4% Timor Leste is a very young island nation. It…

[no-passaran]

Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people

Who are the Shompen?

The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.

Why is there risk of genocide?

India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".

Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”

The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.

This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.

The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).

And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.

Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”

How to help

The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:

From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.

Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.

Sources:

India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.

‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.

Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.

The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.

[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.

[milkilita]

light me up like the fourth of july *ੈ✩‧₊˚ 🇺🇸

[artisticdivasworld]

Sand Drawings of Vanuatu: A Unique Artistic Legacy

Here is the next in our series about art forms.  This time, we look at sand drawings as an art form. Previously, we looked at many other types of art forms, and you can begin your journey by reading about them here. This is an art form I was totally unaware of, and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed my research to learn about it.  This is such an ancient type of art for the people living on…

[demaparbat-hp]

Here I am, pushing the Jian Li (Akai Kotou! Zuko) = Jinshi (The Apothecary Diaries) agenda.

[ac1d-rainz]

don't make it look so obvious!

[jadafitch]

Petit Manan Lighthouse, Petit Manan Island, Steuben. Possibly my favorite lighthouse. In the summer, this island is home to hundreds of birds. Including Atlantic puffins, arctic, common and roseate terns, as well as black guillemots and many more. Decided I couldn't draw them all, but here's a couple attempts to try and capture the island's vibes. Can you spot the oystercatchers? MERCH

[kristo-flowers]

Moments apart. Teide national park, Tenerife

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Young Chincoteague ponies wrestle on Chincoteague Island, part of Virginia's Eastern Shore, in the 1970s. 

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES L. STANFIELD, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

[canisvesperus]

And we wouldn’t have to pay to see ourselves in museums.

Source

[daily-public-domain]

Day 277: Lonely squid, 900 meters deep

link

–This image is part of the public domain, meaning you can do anything you want with it! (you could even sell it as a shirt, poster or whatever, no need to credit it!)–

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Long considered extinct, pentl'ach has now been declared a living language and added to British Columbia's official list of First Nations languages.  The reclassification of pentl'ach (pronounced "PUNT-lutch") was the result of both linguistic and administrative work by the Qualicum First Nation on Vancouver Island's east coast, with support from the First Peoples' Cultural Council.  The Coast Salish language had been considered extinct because the last well known fluent speaker died in the 1940s.  But Mathew Andreatta, a Qualicum member and researcher with the pentl'ach revitalization project, said the language was never truly gone.  Andreatta called the reclassification "an affirmation of something that we've always known and that we've always felt." He said the move is important because it is healing for his people, but also because it opens more doors to continue revitalizing the language. 

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada