Militarization And Environmental Injustice In The Mariana Islands

ANNA ROTHSCHILD: Now let’s take a trip to the Northern Mariana Islands, a string of islands in the Pacific just north of Guam. The islands were sites of major battles during World War II and were captured by the US in 1944. The US established a military presence across the territory including building the world’s largest air force base at the time on an island called Tinian.

And the US military never left. In the ’80s, the Northern Mariana Islands became a US territory. A few years ago, the Pentagon proposed building a bombing range on one of the islands, Pagan, but the residents of the island pushed back.

Joining me to discuss the military’s environmental impact on the islands and around the world is Dr. Isa Arriola, a cultural anthropologist at Concordia University in Montreal and co-founder of the organization Our Commonwealth 670. She’s speaking to me from Saipan, capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. Welcome to Science Friday.

ISA ARRIOLA: [NON-ENGLISH]. And thank you for having me today.

ANNA ROTHSCHILD: Oh, it’s our pleasure. So how has the military’s presence on the islands affected both people and the environment?

ISA ARRIOLA: So in the post-war era, you’re seeing a lot of continued buildup of military presence in the region to combat which was at the time Japan. And it’s been a bit quiet for a while, but what you’re seeing now is a ramping up of a lot of militarization, what we call hyper militarization, as a response to what the US sees as a Chinese threat in the Western Pacific.

So what we’re seeing is that while the environment was devastated during the war, we’re now seeing a remilitarization of the islands, especially Tinian, where a divert airfield, for example, is being built, a fuel pipeline over the only potable source of water. And we’re seeing a lot of land clearing, and this is interfering with our people’s ability to make our own sovereign decisions about our land.

ANNA ROTHSCHILD: As we said, the US military uses land across the Marianas, but in 2013, the military proposed a plan to use the island of Pagan for training. How did residents push back?

ISA ARRIOLA: ‘Til 2013, it had never been proposed to use the island of Pagan, which is a northern island in the Northern Mariana Islands. So this provoked a very intense resistance in the community because there were people who had grown up there and who were raised on that island and had actually moved when a volcano erupted in the ’70s.

And so the way that the military was framing it was like it was this almost uninhabited island that could be used for military training. The community was just incensed. There were all these women-led organizations that came out and stepped up to say we can’t have this. People were really active in getting commenting campaigns for the environmental impact statement that was slated to use the island of Pagan for live fire training. So these were really intense, environmentally destructive practices that were happening.

And what ended up happening was almost 30,000 comments were submitted for that environmental impact statement, and up until that time, it was really unprecedented to have that amount of comments. As a result, the military came back and they said you know what. We’re going to take Pagan off the table. But, again, I want to point out that even though that really is considered a community win, the military had no business using Pagan to begin with. It was nothing we ever really agreed on, and it was something that was released in an environmental impact statement to our surprise really as a community.

ANNA ROTHSCHILD: What kind of work does your organization, Our Commonwealth 670, do?

ISA ARRIOLA: So we do a lot of research awareness raising about the process of militarization and the way that it’s connected to not only our own self-determination but Indigenous sovereignty. We also want to connect and work to change the narrative around the security discourse that we are so often used to hearing out here, which is there is no other way. You must have this level of militarization to protect yourself from threats from China, from threats from North Korea, and so on. We are the, quote unquote– and I really don’t like this phrase– but we are the, quote unquote, tip of the spear. We are considered a westernmost border of the United States in its fight, and so we’re seeing a lot of that playing out on the ground right now.

ANNA ROTHSCHILD: Yeah, there’s a strange irony here because I think a lot of people equate the military with safety as you said, but at the same time, the world’s militaries contribute almost 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And the US military is the biggest contributor of them all, which globally can actually make people more unsafe.

ISA ARRIOLA: I think what we’re seeing is that the United States military or the Pentagon is really weaponizing environmental stewardship to its advantage. And we always have to ask the question of to what end. Is it to sustain the earth? Is it to sustain the livelihood of the communities in which you’re working with? Or is it to complete your defense goals?

You’re having the department of the navy call itself the stewards of the environment on Indigenous territory where the Indigenous people are really the original stewards of that environment. And all of this is happening all for the broader nation state, and we’re left asking where do we fit into all of this. Where should we stand?

ANNA ROTHSCHILD: You’ve advocated for demilitarization more broadly beyond your islands. How does demilitarization intersect with climate justice, and what would you like to see happen?

ISA ARRIOLA: Well, when you have an area that’s highly militarized, you also see an uptick in environmental exemptions. So there’s a very real problem here when we’re talking about militarization and the environment and environmental stewardship. And that is that if anything is considered, quote unquote, paramount interest of the United States under the Pentagon, that area can be used for almost anything from live fire training to bombing, et cetera. And so the Pentagon is able to skirt a lot of environmental regulation by using that provision.

So a lot of this is a question of land desecration, too, especially over Indigenous territory. Two thirds of Tinian is already leased by the Pentagon, for example. And Tinian was once the island that housed the atomic bombs that were later dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we’re seeing a remilitarization of that island. They’re now turning it into a divert airfield or a base basically apparently in case Guam gets attacked.

There’s also the question of water contamination. I mentioned earlier that so many of these military pipelines go over really sacred and important sources of water in our community, which are not– they’re finite. And so we have very little environmental oversight for what happens when something leaks, for example. We don’t have any security over who will clean it up and how long will you clean it up. And so the environment becomes a afterthought in the process of all of this rather than the first thing that should be taken into account.

ANNA ROTHSCHILD: To wrap up, what does the future of the climate movement look like to you?

ISA ARRIOLA: I think it’s Indigenous led. I think it’s women led. I think this is the history that we’ve been given and these are the players that have consistently stood up to argue that the land is the most central thing in this conversation and we can’t keep prioritizing bombs and bullets over what we put in our bodies, over what we teach our children, over the sanctity and importance of our cultural transmission. I think that’s where I see it being. That’s where I see the conversations leading towards. And I’m proud to be part of that.

ANNA ROTHSCHILD: That’s beautiful. Isa, thank you so much for talking with me.

ISA ARRIOLA: [NON-ENGLISH]. Thank you for having me.

ANNA ROTHSCHILD: Dr. Isa Arriola is a cultural anthropologist at Concordia University in Montreal and co-founder of Our Commonwealth 670 based in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands.

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