No Turning Back - First Evacuations Now Underway In Remote Vanuatu Atoll

[hatrack]

It's happening already: an entire village on a small island in Vanuatu is on the move because of rising sea levels. Ben Bohane visits Tegua Island. "The sea has its own ways. We can't control it," says Chief Reuben Selwyn as he stands on a thin wall of coral, which is all that now separates his little village from the invading sea.

The destiny of Tegua island, home to 64 people in the remote Torres group of islands in far north Vanuatu, has always rested on the sea. The sea brought its first settlers at least 3000 years ago on bamboo rafts, its raiding enemies from nearby islands, the first beche-de-mer traders from Europe, "blackbirders" and Anglican missionaries.

EDIT

Paramount head of the island and father of six boys and six girls, Chief Reuben claims that at least once a year a combination of king tides and a surging sea floods his village, Loteu. As a young boy, he remembers walking 30 metres from his house to fish from a rocky beach platform. Now, the platform is submerged and he has been forced to abandon his childhood home. "I'd say the sea has come up 10 or 20 metres since I was a boy," he says. "I can't say if it's because of humans or because nature has its own power. But for us here we have no choice; early next year we will move into a new village further inland."

EDIT

Pacific islanders living on low-lying coral atolls are among those seriously at risk. Two uninhabited Kiribati islands disappeared in 1999. Tuvalu has approached Australia and New Zealand to resettle its entire population, when its islands are expected to go under water within the next 30 years. Meanwhile, 2000 people on the Carteret islands in Papua New Guinea are preparing to move to Bougainville island. One Carteret islander told the ABC recently that they were only waiting on government money to help them move. Their health has been deteriorating because they are losing access to fresh water, and gardens are being destroyed by advancing salt water. On Tegua, Chief Reuben faces the same problems.

EDIT

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/surging-seas-force-islanders-to-pack-their-bags/2006/01/04/1136050495641.html

[soothsayer]

1. Vanauatu looked really pretty on Survivor. Dag.

[phantom power]

2. I wonder when it will turn from thousands...

into hundreds of thousands? Or millions?

[NNadir]

3. I'm not sure that the amount of land going under water will be as

important ultimately as the number of people killed in famines and other weather related dislocations.

We may think we're immune, but we're not.

[phantom power]

5. Famine will be harder to escape.

I do recall reading that 60% of the world's population lives within 5 miles of the ocean. So I imagine that ocean-based disasters like rising sea levels or hurricanes will cause some major dislocations.

[One_Life_To_Give]

4. Why is the island sinking?

"I'd say the sea has come up 10 or 20 metres since I was a boy,"

This is interesting. But the sea has not yet risen by the levels being suggested here.

[Dead_Parrot]

6. I think tides accentuate the problem in mid ocean

so a 10cm rise in sea levels turn into a 10m rise in tide levels. I confess to being vague on that aspect, though...

[Nihil]

7. It's not - you misread :-)

The sea has not risen by "10 or 20 metres" but has come up the (flat) beach
by that amount ... i.e., is 10 or 20 metres closer to the guy's house than
it was when he grew up.