Anthropogenic climate change does not create crisis in isolation. Consequences of our current climate crisis can compound and amplify existing rifts within our social and ecological fabrics. The forefront communities bearing these effects are low-lying atoll nations, most of which are in the Oceania. By most estimates, atoll nations would be uninhabitable as early as mid twenty-first century. Nowhere is this issue clearer on the Marshall Islands, where a layered history of colonization, militarization and pollution results in the challenging landscape islanders face today. Between 1946 and 1958, United States conducted 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands’ Bikini and Eniwetok atolls. Subsequent health effects, along with impacts of resources and cultural deprivation, makes the Marshalls uniquely vulnerable to an increasingly hostile climate. Since independence, the Marshallese Compact of Free Association (COFA) with the United States for free movement while US continues operating military bases and missile tests in their territory. At the same time, Marshall Islands have been consequential in pushing the world to tougher climate mitigation targets, most famously during the Paris Agreement negotiations. An island nation that contributes a trivial amount of emissions and other environmental damage cannot maintain their habitats alone. This thesis project looks at the layered disasters of Marshall Islands and align them with emerging practices of remembrance, resilience, and resistance.

This is a MS Design and Urban Ecologies thesis at Parsons School of Design that confronts of the climate dilemmas facing Marshallese people today. Facing a seemingly insurmountable challenge, how can different levels of society a just and secure habitat? What are some of the existing strategies that are working to achieve these goals, and what motivates them throughout this struggle? What can I, as an ally, contribute for more effective resiliency and genuine policy change for the benefit of the Marshallese? This project begins by conducting a historical and situational analysis of threading the current unfolding of climate change in islander communities. I based my research on theories of disaster anthropology, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and activist optimism; and relying on historical archives and environmental reviews, this part of my thesis seeks to ground the intersectional landscapes of disasters. Realizing Marshall Islands deep connection with maps and mapmaking, and connecting that with my own skillsets, I then used maps to analyze further how these layered histories shape Marshallese communities at home and abroad.

The design components build upon previous cartographic depictions and analysis of climate crisis in Marshallese communities. Understanding the networked nature of this work, the project uses an interactive web platform as the underlying thread within the design strategy. Targeted at audiences unfamiliar with the cause but powered by existing activism and individual voices, the platform can act as a tool for activists on the ground pushing for local to international policy change to more clearly argue the intersectionality of crises and a need for environmental and social care beyond built infrastructures.

Marshall Islands alone cannot solve climate change, but it is clear from my research that the unfolding of crises on the atolls present a clear example that our current understanding of climate change is incomplete without understanding how various historical trauma amplify accelerated climate change. For an island that cannot domestically generate enough force to overcome its challenges, it is necessary for activists from all levels of Marshallese government and society to ensure global and local solutions towards its goal, by forming coalitions and alliances along the way for networked solutions. At the same time, we as allies must not see crises on the ground as all “doom and gloom.” Marshallese people are not (only) victims of climate change, but the vanguard fighters to an issue the whole world is facing. Through a process of creating sense of abundance and optimism with Marshallese habitat, culture, and identity, we can fully resist the forces of colonial trauma and climate challenges and push other peoples to act the same. Thus, “Atolling” Sovereignty, reflects upon the process of a growing coral atoll as a metaphor for the growth of systemic, climate-oriented resistance and activism that ensures a future of true independence of the Marshall Islands and other Pacific peoples.