Vulnerabilities and Adaptation in the Marshall Islands

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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