Climate Change (Sinking Island) (updated 8th March, 2010)

Carteret Atoll, also known as “The Carteret Island” is part of Papua New Guinea located 86 kilometres northeast of Bougainville in the South Pacific at 4°45'S, 155°24'E. Carteret Atoll incorporates a scattering of low lying islands in a horseshoe shape stretching around 30 kilometers in north-south direction, with a total land area of 0.6 square kilometers and a maximum elevation of 1.5 meters
above sea level.

For more than 30 years, the inhabitants of the Carteret atolls have battled the Pacific ocean to stop salt water destroying their coconut palms and waves crashing over their houses. A decision was already made that will make their group of low-lying islands literally go down in history.

After 150 countries met in Montreal to discuss how to combat global warming and rising sea levels, the Carterets' people became the first to be officially evacuated because of climate change.They will be the first island community in the world to undergo an organized relocation, in response to their island sinking. The people of the Carteret are being called the world's first environmental refugees.

As per resettlement plan,10 families at a time will be moved to Bougainville, a larger island 100 kilometres away. Within two years the six Carterets, roughly the size of 80 football pitches and just 1.5 metres high, will be uninhabited and undefended. By 2015 they are likely to be completely submerged. The evacuation of the islands, named after the British navigator Philip Carteret, who discovered them in 1767, has been inevitable for more than 20 years.

According to the authorities, storm surges and erosion have worsened considerably and the atolls have been losing bits regularly. In 1995 a wave washed away most of the shorelines of Piul and Huene
islands. Han island was completely inundated and Huene was cut in half by the sea.

Life on the Carterets has been far from the Western imagination of delightful coconut palm-fringed South Sea islands. cademics have reported that many people have nearly starved because saltwater intrusion has destroyed their trees and stopped them growing greens and breadfruit.

For some years the islanders, who have almost no cash, have depended on emergency aid. There is no air service and a government boat only drops in a few times a year. The Carterets will join many other Pacific islands that are on the point of being swallowed by the sea.