Journey to the sinking lands

Ever heard of the Carterets Islands? Me neither - until tonight that is. I just returned from a really excellent talk by a BBC journalist Dan Box who won a Royal Geographical Society travel award to go on a journey of a lifetime and report back. Check out his blog here

The Cartarets (near Papua New Guinea) are becoming famous as the "poster island" for rising sea levels - being the first place where an entire population is going to be evacuated because the island is disappearing / sinking. 

The talk was interesting and informative - but best of all - free from soap box preaching or unsubstantiated fact. It really was balanced.


The picture here of the island beach tells the story well

The tree stump in the sea should not be there - trees do not grow in salt water. Locals report the sea level has reduced the width of their island by 30 m to only 200 m within a generation. Interestingly that's about 400 mm. Natural sinking of the atol accounts for approx 50 mm and global warming (mainly expansion of the ocean) accounts for maybe another 100 mm. The difference is thought to be due to erosion of the land by increased storm activity.


The long term future for the islands is pretty much certain - they're a goner. Dan presents the story as a "lessons learnt" excercise. There are currently 8000 people who will eventually need to be evacuated. This started with a government program - but the funds appear to have disappeared in corruption. Now the families themselves have taken matters into their own hands and have sent 5 fathers to the mainland to set up home and eventually bring the first families over. The issue is not just that the land mass is decreasing. These people live (sustainably) by fishing and growing fruit and vegetables. These gardens are increasingly diminishing as they are being poisoned by sea water in tidal floods and ground water contamination.

A few things I took from the talk

• The Carterets are far from being the only ones. Evacuations have already started elsewhere
• Despite 8000 people being a relatively small number - it is incredibly difficult to move them even though it is within their own country. Why?
• the place they want to go to already has people - they do not want 8000 extra mouths to feed
• the migration must be slow and sustainable to avoid a refugee type situation
• the islanders live a cash free existence - so they have no money to set up
• there is a large culture shock as they will have to quickly change from subsistence living to getting jobs

• This is on the easy end of the Spectrum. Imagine what it will be like when the numbers increase to tens and hundreds of thousands 

What was not clear from the talk is - what can be done to help the islanders in their evacuation and on the world stage - what can be done. 


Again it seems clear that the first step is education and changing attitudes - as without this - nothing can change