Bateteba Aselu describes her former life in Tuvalu as like living in the “safest place in the world” where the community looked out for each other, there was no homelessness and you rarely heard the sirens of police or ambulances.
But rising sea levels and extreme weather have created such an immediate existential threat to the tiny South Pacific island nation that when a new visa lottery to migrate to Australia closed last Friday, 8,750 people in 2,474 family groups – more than 80% of Tuvalu’s population of 11,000 residents – had applied for the world’s first “climate visas”.
“The impact of climate change about two decades ago has become such a significant challenge to people’s livelihoods,” says Aselu, who is doing a PhD in climate change at the University of Melbourne, focusing on small island states. She is one of those who has applied for the visa.
The new visa allows 280 Tuvaluans to move to Australia annually, part of the Falepili Union treaty signed in November 2023, which also included a security pact and $150m in new commitments to improve livelihoods in Tuvalu.
Aselu moved to Australia four years ago on a student visa. With her husband and two children, she lives in Melton South in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, part of a small Tuvaluan community of just a few hundred – a figure set to grow dramatically as the new climate visa arrivals flow into Australia.
Although the Australian High Commission in Tuvalu has been sharing promotional videos on social media to prepare people for the realities of life in Australia, Aselu says the transition is not easy.
Four years in, adjusting to Australian life has been “quite a challenging journey” for Aselu and her family, she says. “It is a lot to take in and a process that requires time ... having the social network from families, colleagues from school and supervisors as well as spiritual space are crucial for us.”
Despite the challenges, Aselu is confident Tuvaluan culture will “persist no matter where we land or where we go”.
“We are collective and communal and we adapt as we go through this life. Already we have young people who are making waves in working to maintain and preserve our culture from technology to revival of Indigenous knowledge learning in school and community. That is hope for me and for my children and those after them,” she says.
Frayzel Uale and his family are also part of the Tuvaluan community in Melton and among those who applied for the visa. Uale moved to Australia four years ago with his parents and is studying a certificate III in information technology.
Uale says he doesn’t want to move back to Tuvalu to live as he has memories of the extreme weather there frightening him as a child. “Before they started the programs informing us about climate change, I remember waking up with water on the roads and [in] community buildings when the king tides would come on to the land – it was shocking.”
He now sees his future in Australia, where he has the opportunity to get a job, earn money and access everything he needs. But he says the small Tuvaluan community he is part of is actively working to protect and preserve his culture with “regular community events and gatherings”.
“The older generation is keeping cultural life alive and the younger generation is willing to learn. We practise our culture of traditional dancing and singing to ensure the culture will survive here. We will 100% protect our culture here in Australia.”
For Leni Malua-Mataka, a Tuvaluan mother living with her husband and children in Mount Isa in north-west Queensland, the new climate visa offers an opportunity to get ahead. “Coming from such a small country with very limited employment opportunities and few ways to grow wealth or even provide for your family, this opportunity to work, live and raise your family in Australia is a dream,” she says.
“We already have well-established small Tuvaluan communities here in Australia that are more than willing to help, as is our custom.”
A spokesperson for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said a range of support services would be made available to help new visa holders, including briefings on life in Australia, financial and digital literacy training and connecting visa holders with potential employment.
Jane McAdam, professor of law at the University of New South Wales, says although the majority of the population applied, that shouldn’t be read as everyone on Tuvalu wanting to leave due to the climate crisis. “I think it’s more that this visa opens up all sorts of possibilities for schooling and for work – and provides a safety net even if people do want to stay in Tuvalu,” she says.
While recognising the merit of the Falepili Union treaty to allow people from Tuvalu the chance to migrate with dignity, Mahealani Delaney, Pacific community engagement coordinator at Greenpeace Australia, says the climate visa needs to be considered in context.
“Australia continues to produce and export coal, oil and gas, fuelling the climate crisis that is causing people to leave their homelands. It simply is not enough to offer up a solution while ignoring the issue. The most meaningful action that Australia can take is to address the root problem: rapidly and fairly phase out fossil fuels, including no new coalmines and no new dirty gas.”
Malua-Mataka says on her recent visits to Tuvalu she noticed areas around the capital Funafuti where the sea has risen on the lagoon side, which was never the case when she was growing up.
“The impact can be very emotional to talk about especially when I think of my family still living in Tuvalu who face these issues on a daily basis. The impacts far exceed the physical environmental issues. It impacts our government, our global status and most alarmingly, it impacts our future as a nation.”
