Family and Community Obligations Motivate People to Immigrate-A Case Study from the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

A questionnaire survey was conducted in the Marshall Islands among 308 citizens of Majuro in order to analyze the factors that led them to immigrate. Using the results from the questionnaire items that indicate the motivations for emigration as independent variables, we extracted the factors with significantly high correlation coefficients; they suggest that the desire to escape from the many obligations within the family and regional community are predominant push factors for migrating overseas while the economic disparity between the United State and their home countries are predominant pull factors. Independently, the Permutation Feature Importance was used to extract the salient factors motivating migration, which provides similar results. Furthermore, the result of structural equation modeling verified the hypothesis that an escape from many obligations and economic disparity is a major motivation for migration at a significance level of 0.1%.

Mitigating drought impacts in remote island atolls with traditional water usage behaviors and modern technology.

Adaptation to drought is particularly challenging on remote island atolls, such as those found in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), a nation of 58,000 populating 29 low-lying coral atolls spread over >2 million km2. Exposure to consecutive atmospheric hazards, such as meteorological floods and droughts diminish scarce water resources and erode the resilience of island communities. Drought impact mitigation measures must supply emergency drinking water to stricken communities, while simultaneously conserving natural sources in order to reduce their vulnerability to subsequent events. Household surveys (n = 298) and focus group discussions (n = 16) in eight RMI communities revealed that 86% of households have experienced drought and 88% reported using multiple water sources to meet normal household needs. With no surface water and a thin freshwater lens (FWL), rainwater collected from rooftops is the most common household water source. The traditional use of carved hollows in the base of coconut trees to collect rainwater ("Mammaks") appears to have been displaced by large rainwater tanks. However, rationing of rainwater for consumption only during drought was widely reported, with private wells supporting non-consumptive uses. Reverse osmosis (RO) desalination units have provided relief during drought emergencies but concerns have been raised around dependency, maintenance challenges, and loss of traditional water practices. Most notably, RO use has the potential to change the anthroposhpere by adversely affecting the FWL; 86% of RO units were installed at island-centre where excessive pumping can cause upconing, making the FWL brackish. Balancing the introduction of desalination technology to mitigate water shortages with maintenance of traditional water conservation practices to preserve the quantity and quality of the FWL is a promising strategy on island atolls that requires further investigation.