Listen:
Availability:
Available to listen.
Last broadcast on Thu, 28 May 2009, 13:30 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
Tom Heap reports on the first large scale human evacuation due to climate change. The Carteret Islands, a small coral atoll in the South Pacific are slowly being submerged by the rising sea, forcing the removal of hundreds of islanders to nearby Papua New Guinea.
The Carteret Islands, an atoll in the Pacific Ocean
The Careteret Islands: A coral atoll off the coast of Papua New Guinea are the size of eighty football pitches and home to around two and a half thousand people. Sadly for them islands summit is only five foot high – most adults would dwarf the peak.
They were discovered by a British navigator, Philip Carteret in 1767 just as the Industrial Revolution was beginning back here. Two and a half centuries later industries appetite for fossil fuels has changed the climate. The ice is melting, the sea level is rising and now the Islanders have to leave.
Rising Tides
The rising seas of the Pacific have swamped the beaches of the Carteret Islands. Where once palm trees once grew there is now sea.
With sea levels on the rise, the land is becoming poisoned by salt. Very little grows and food is becoming scarcer and scarcer for the islanders.
As a result, the first evacuation of a population due to climate change is underway with the relocation of hundreds of islanders to nearby Bougainville, a larger island off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
The first arrivals at Tinputz on the island of Bougainville
Dan Box witnessed the first wave of environmental migration as the first group of islanders from the Carterets arrived at Tinputz on the island of Bougainville.
Five fathers from the island have come to set up home, build gardens and perpare the way for the arrival of their families as the evacuation of the Pacific atoll begins.
Broadcasts
-
Mon 25 May 200921:00
-
Thu 28 May 200913:30
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~31~RS~){kind=small}