Can weather change the demographics of an island over the course of a single lifetime? If we take Pablo Preciado’s word for it, it can. Pablo Preciado is the leader of the island of Carti Sugdub, one of the Panamanian islands. Global warming and erosion of the coral reefs are threatening to submerge a lot of Caribbean islands that make up Panama.
Pablo Preciado says that in his childhood floods were rare and the water levels barely wetted his toes. Now, it’s a different picture altogether. Rising water levels are forcing Panamanians to leave their coastal homes and move inland.
The coral reefs used to be a natural buffer against the buffeting waves, but rampant mining has shaved off the protective barrier. Pablo Preciado is leading a group of his villagers in an imminent move further inland. They are preparing their new settlements by clearing tropical forests. Nearly 2000 people may make the move. The government says that rising sea levels threatens the livelihood of 32,000 of the Carti Sugdub denizens.
The retreat of the Panama Islanders could be among the first that’s caused by global warming and rising sea levels. Such a drastic shift in livelihood patterns and migration to the hinterland could become across the world. Already signs are ominous from communities as far apart as Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Fiji. The exodus could represent the uprooting of millions and have far-reaching effects.
Hector Guzman, a marine biologist and coral specialist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama told Reuters –
“This is no longer about a scientist saying that climate change and the change in sea level will flood (a people) and affect them.”
According to Guzman who has been studying the Kuna people of the Carti Sugdub islands, coal mining to build artificial breakwaters and islets has also accelerated their problems. Te people are fiercely protective of their customs and have a belief that God will protect them.
The Kuna could rank among the first examples of ‘climate refugees’. It’s a term that will get more common as sea levels continue to rise. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that seas could rise 2 meters (6.5 feet) by the end of the century, putting in danger millions of people in cities from Tokyo and Shanghai to New Orleans.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
