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OurWorld 2.0: How-to Guide for Environmental Refugees
18 June, 2009
For some time now, Carteret Islanders have made eye-catching headlines: "Going, going... Papua New Guinea atoll sinking fast". Academics have dubbed us amongst the world's first "environmental refugees" and journalists put us on the "frontline of climate change."
So perhaps you have heard how we build sea walls and plant mangroves, only to see our land and homes washed away by storm surges and high tides. Maybe you can even recognise the tragic irony in the fact that the Carterets people have lived simply (without cars or electricity) -- subsisting mainly on fish, bananas and vegetables -- and have therefore not had much of a "carbon footprint".
You might know that encroaching salt water has contaminated our fresh water wells and turned our vegetable plots into swampy breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitos. Taro, the staple food crop, no longer grows on the atoll. Carterets Islanders now face severe food shortages, with government aid coming by boat two or three times a year.
However, the story you have not likely read is the one of government failure and the strategy we developed in response, so as to engineer our own exile from a drowning traditional homeland.
Carterets people are facing, and will continue to face, many challenges as we relocate from our ancestral grounds. However, our plan is one in which we remain as independent and self-sufficient as possible. We wish to maintain our cultural identity and live sustainably wherever we are.
While we call on the Papua New Guinea government to develop policy, we are not sitting by. Instead, we now want to see the media headlines translate into practical assistance for our relocation program. And we hope our carefully designed and community-led action plan can serve as a model for communities elsewhere that will be affected by climate change in the future.
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Page last modified 2009.11.02.
