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Today, coastal cities worldwide are struggling with the complex interaction of environmental threats, economic development, and societal inequity. The acceleration of global climate change, which will impact ocean health, sea level, rainfall patterns, and temperatures, will only further exacerbate the ongoing challenges faced by coastal cities. Coastal cities face interconnected risks that necessitate the use of a data collection and an assessment approach that can assess these impacts through a holistic lens. Risk is the interaction of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability, and while data on hazards and exposure is becoming more widely available, data on the vulnerability of urban coastal populations remains limited. These data gaps are particularly acute for the Global South, where climate change is expected to have the greatest near-term impacts. Policymakers need city-specific data to best understand their levels of risk and engage in effective adaptation planning. This paper introduces the Climate and Ocean Risk Vulnerability Index (CORVI), its conceptual framework, methodology, and protocol. The article also demonstrates the application of CORVI through two pilot projects in Castries, Saint Lucia and Kingston, Jamaica. It concludes with a reflection of lessons learned from the pilot projects, and an assessment of the utility of the structured expert judgement (SEJ) for collecting data and measuring risk in data sparse environments. This paper makes two primary contributions. First it introduces CORVI, a decision support tool that assesses climate risk and resilience in a coastal city. The tool uses the SEJ methodology to display risk scores across 10 risk categories and 94 indicators addressing ecological, financial, and political risk. Second, it demonstrates the use of the SEJ methodology in data sparse environments.

People from Kiribati, especially after obtaining college degrees, tend to have a desire to migrate abroad to obtain further education and good jobs and, to some extent, due to the impacts of climate change. Nineteen percent of I-Kiribati migrants in Fiji who responded to our survey indicated climate change as a factor for their migration, but their primary reasons were to seek better education and employment. When seeking employment, their lack of English-language skills and professional qualifications posed challenges. However, those who had prepared well in advance tend to find jobs relatively smoothly after migration. When settling in a new area, people tended to rely on family connections, community groups, and other social supports as sources of network and safety net.

Little is known about the extent to which climate change drives migration from the Pacific atoll nation of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). How and to what extent the youth of RMI aspire to migrate to other countries was investigated through a survey of 106 students at the Marshall Islands Campus of the University of the South Pacific (RMI-USP). While 44% of respondents indicated an aspiration to move abroad either for study or employment, and most students were well aware of the adverse effects of climate change, climate change was not cited as the primary reason or motivation for migration. Analysis of data in a second study explored the University’s tracking data of Foundation Year graduates from the RMI-USP Joint Education Program. This analysis found that students who have studied abroad are more likely to have the opportunity to either stay abroad or to migrate at some time after their studies.

Coastal communities are exposed to various environmental risks, including natural hazards such as storm surges and flooding. As climate change has escalated, the management of such dangers has grown in importance and urgency, particularly among states with long coast lines. Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction have attracted attention from policymakers in Southeast Asia, which is one of the most disaster-prone regions. Coastal community resilience, however, is not determined by climate and disaster risks alone, but by other factors as well. Waste pollution is an environmental threat that may affect those who are dependent on marine resources. These multiple factors contribute to coastal resilience and are, in fact, addressed separately as different issues, therefore, conflicts or synergies in respective countermeasures often become oversights in the policy-making processes. Through a case study of key Philippine stakeholders, including fishing communities, we identified impacts of climate change, natural hazards, and waste on the livelihoods of community residents and the interplay among these factors. We aim to better understand the situation on the ground and contribute by improving policy recommendations for coastal communities. An integrated approach to enhance coastal adaptation is critical for maximising the effectiveness of the limited resources of communities.

Climate Change Induced Transboundary Displaced Persons (CCITDPs) are people who are forced to leave their own country permanently because of adverse effects of climate change such as submergence of homeland by sealevel rise. The type of displacement anticipated by climate change implications is analogous to forced displacement resulting from war, conflict within a country, development projects, industrial accidents, and natural disasters. This study aims to identify the unique aspects of CCITDPs. We developed suggestions regarding how CCITDPs may re-establish their livelihoods by themselves after relocation. People displaced by slow-onset sea-level rise have as many as two to three decades to plan for resettlement, which may let them prepare well for livelihood re-establishment after resettlement. Relocation of CCITDPs may take a few decades; therefore, CCITDPs may learn from those pioneers who moved to a new country first what their possible destination is like. Lack of a responsible body for climate change and the subsequent paucity of funds for relocating CCITDPs is a unique and major difficulty for CCITDPs. Some CCITDPs may view their forced migration as emancipation from conventional thought and old customs, or as a chance to secure a new job. It is desirable to show CCITDPs that their inevitable relocation may be an opportunity rather than a miserable fate.

This study aims to suggest another view of the so-called “climate refugee”, especially those from the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific Ocean. Although many studies have been conducted on the legal aspects of the climate refugees’ situations, little has been studied about how they succeed in re-establishing their livelihoods after relocation. Unlike migrations forced by other causes, the future migrations induced by sea level rise have a long lead time which gives the people involved the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to adjust to their new lives. This paper examines whether “pre-training” opportunities are sufficient in those countries from which climate refugees are most likely to come. The author focuses on the Republic of the Marshall Islands, one of the small island countries in the Pacific being threatened by environmental changes such as rising sea level, high tides, and drought. Due to a unique situation allowing the Marshallese people to move to the United States without a visa, many people do so each year under the free association partnership. However, some of these migrants fail to adjust to the United States and come back to their home islands, possibly due to a lack of skills. Given that more climate refugees are likely in the future, pre-training that provides essential skills to benefit future climate refugees is necessary. Through key informant interviews in the Marshall Islands, it seems that such training opportunities are currently limited, but have great potential to flourish.

Recent studies have proposed that n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) have direct antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects in vascular tissue, explaining their cardioprotective effects. However, the molecular mechanisms are not yet fully understood. We tested whether n-3 PUFAs showed antioxidant activity through the activation of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), a master transcriptional factor for antioxidant genes. C57BL/6 or Nrf2(-/-) mice were fed a fish-oil diet for 3 weeks. Fish-oil diet significantly increased the expression of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), and endothelium-dependent vasodilation in the aorta of C57BL/6 mice, but not in the Nrf2(-/-) mice. Furthermore, we observed that 4-hydroxy hexenal (4-HHE), an end-product of n-3 PUFA peroxidation, was significantly increased in the aorta of C57BL/6 mice, accompanied by intra-aortic predominant increase in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) rather than that in eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Human umbilical vein endothelial cells were incubated with DHA or EPA. We found that DHA, but not EPA, markedly increased intracellular 4-HHE, and nuclear expression and DNA binding of Nrf2. Both DHA and 4-HHE also increased the expressions of Nrf2 target genes including HO-1, and the siRNA of Nrf2 abolished these effects. Furthermore, DHA prevented oxidant-induced cellular damage or reactive oxygen species production, and these effects were disappeared by an HO-1 inhibitor or the siRNA of Nrf2. Thus, we found protective effects of DHA through Nrf2 activation in vascular tissue, accompanied by intra-vascular increases in 4-HHE, which may explain the mechanism of the cardioprotective effects of DHA.

This study aims to identify a useful and practical methodology to rehabilitate the livelihoods of climate change induced transboundary displaced persons (CCITDP) after they move to developed nations, in particular those from the Small Island Developing States in the Pacific Ocean. Migration sometimes causes conflicts among migrants, or between migrants and those in the host community. Such conflicts could be avoided or mitigated by examining the lessons learned from people’s past resettlement experiences—from those displaced by large infrastructure development projects in Asia and the Pacific or from evacuees of Fukushima due to the nuclear power plant disaster—and using these experiences to better cope with the emergence of CCITDP. Evacuees of an island that is sinking due to sea-level rise may be regarded as either voluntary migrants or CCITDP depending on when they leave the island. Although, lower-class people, who are vulnerable to hardships, will need to leave their homes earlier than wealthier people. These two groups of migrants should be assisted equally to avoid conflicts between the two groups because they may live in the same place after relocation and also to discourage them from staying on the island until they are entitled to assistance as CCITDP. Not all migrants will miss family bonds after relocation, and some may actually enjoy their emancipation from old customs by moving to a new place. The best destination for the first generation of migrants may differ from the best destination for their children.