The Sinking Islands

Synopsis

The 2009 winner of the BBC/Royal Geographical Society's annual competition for the most enterprising dream travel idea, Dan Box, attempts to reach the remote Carteret Islands in the South Pacific, where, with sea levels rising, the world's first mass evacuation as the result of climate change is now taking place.

These low-lying islands, part of Papua New Guinea, rise barely a metre above the level of the surrounding ocean, and with what are known as King Tides threatening every year, rising sea levels as a result of global warming are a threat that is already a reality for the Carteret Islanders. Last winter's great storm resulted in the islands being badly flooded, their productive soil rendered useless by the salt in the water. Now the Carteret people have no way of growing crops in their plots, or 'gardens', and the local authorities have started a process of mass evacuation. Eventually thousands of men, women and children will be resettled in the neighbouring island community of Bougainville.

Dan Box was determined to watch the world's first organised exodus as a result of climate change as it got underway. But first he had to negotiate the tricky journey - diplomatic as well as physical - that would take him to these tiny spikes of coral amid the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.

Broadcast

1. Fri 4 Sep 2009
   11:00
   BBC Radio 4