A man is fighting to stay in New Zealand and persuade country judges that he's a climate refugee after leaving his home island of Kiribati for higher ground with his family according to the Associated Press.
"There's no future for us when we go back to Kiribati," he told the tribunal, according to the transcript the AP reported. "Especially for my children. There's nothing for us there."
The 37 year old and his wife vacated their coral island in the pacific nation of Kiribati six years ago for higher ground and better opportunity in New Zealand where their three children were born. Immigration authorities have not accepted the man's argument that rising sea levels create a situation that is too dangerous for he and his family to go back to their old home.
Michael Kidd, the lawyer representing the man will bring the man's case before New Zealand's High Court Oct. 16. According to the AP, Kidd, who is an expert in human rights cases, will appeal the case to the highest level to the country's Supreme Court if necessary.
"Kiribati may be doomed by climate change in the near future," Rimon Rimon, a Kiribati government spokesman told the AP. "But just claiming refugee status due to climate change is the easy way out."
The Kiribati has a total of 33 coral islands. The islands stand halfway between Hawaii and Australia with a total of 103,000 people living on them. Scientists have categorized the land as being the most susceptible to climate change. The man said in 1998, big tides began to go over the sea walls around his village, which was overcrowded and did not have a sewage system the AP reported. The drinking water supply would also make people throw up. People would also be forced to live in water that was knee deep with no opportunity to escape to drier ground.
