Rising sea forces Panama islanders to move to mainland

Desdemona Despair

By Lomi Kriel; Editing by Dave Graham and Eric Walsh
1 November 2012

CARTI SUGDUB, Panama (Reuters) – Every rainy season, the Guna people living on the Panamanian white sand archipelago of San Blas brace themselves for waves gushing into their tiny mud-floor huts.

Rising ocean levels caused by global warming and decades of coral reef destruction have combined with seasonal rains to submerge the Caribbean islands for days on end.

Once rare, flooding is now so menacing that the Guna have agreed to abandon ancestral lands for an area within their semi-autonomous territory on the east coast of the mainland.

“The people know this isn’t normal,” said Francisco Gonzalez, 38, the school principal on Carti Sugdub. “When the water comes in, they can’t do anything but wait.”

It is the largest of the Guna’s 45 inhabited islands, and its planned evacuation is among the first blamed largely on climate change. Scientists say worldwide sea levels have risen about 3 millimeters (0.12 inch) a year since 1993. Recent research suggests they could rise as much as 2 meters (6.5 feet) by 2100.

The phenomenon threatens low-lying communities around the world. Central America, a strip of land between two oceans, is particularly vulnerable. In western El Salvador, rising tide has swallowed up at least 1,000 feet of mangroves separating residents of La Tirana from the Pacific.

“It’s another example that climate change is here, and it’s here to stay,” said Hector Guzman, a marine biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

The Guna have accelerated change by mining surrounding coral reefs to build up the islands. From 1970-2001, nearly 80 percent of the peripheral coral disappeared as the Guna population more than doubled, Guzman and other Smithsonian researchers found.

They say the dilemma faced by the Guna is a harbinger of what might happen to other low-lying lands protected by reefs. The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide makes oceans more acidic, killing off coral.

In April, Guna leaders signed a resolution agreeing to move, saying, “Climate change will sooner or later affect the islands … it’s our responsibility to prevent a catastrophe.” […]

The overpopulated island is also running out of space. Families squeeze up to 15 people into huts measuring barely 5 square meters (54 square feet), sleeping side by side in narrow hammocks. […]

Rising sea forces Panamanian islanders to move to mainland