Island in Panama is emptied due to threat of rising sea levels

Gardi Sugdub is one of around 50 islands that are home to the indigenous Guna people, who have built a life dedicated to the ocean, fishing and tourism. The indigenous islanders are the first Panamanian island community asked by the government to move to the mainland in the coming decades.

The indigenous people of Gardi Sugdub once inhabited forests and mountains, in an area that covers Colombia and Panama. But they were forced to flee about 300 years ago due to Spanish conquerors and conflicts with other indigenous groups.

Now, the very ocean that the Guna people have long relied on poses a threat to their existence, as rapidly warming global temperatures raise the world’s sea levels.

After many years of planning, more than a thousand Guna people have finally received the keys to their new homes, and many have slowly begun moving into a newly built town called Isber Yala in recent days.

The region’s indigenous people are not legally required to move and many are choosing to remain on their home islands.

People living on the islands of the Guna Yala archipelago, which includes Gardi Sugdub, are among the first climate refugees in the region.

Local residents on Gardi Sugdub, however, say there are also long-standing concerns that their island is becoming crowded. The climate crisis ends up accelerating relocation.

“The Guna people and other indigenous communities in the Caribbean will be affected by rising sea levels in the region, so of course we have to be prepared,” said Blas Lopez, a Guna leader in Gardi Sugdub who was part of the relocation committee, The CNN .

“It’s in the oral history of the Guna people, we always talk about what happens when strong winds blow, communities get flooded. The consequences can happen in 30 or 50 years. So, we have to organize ourselves, we have to plan,” he adds.

Even if the world drastically reduces the pollution that warms the planet and causes climate change, scientists say some sea level rise is already locked in by the end of the century.

And this increase will not happen uniformly across the world. Small, low-lying islands in the tropics, such as those in the Guna Yala archipelago, will bear the brunt. In these regions, the elevation is existential.

“Within 40 to 80 years – depending on the height of the islands and the rate of sea level rise – most if not all inhabited islands will literally be underwater,” warned Steven Paton, director of the Smithsonian’s physical monitoring program. Institution in Panama.

Living side by side

Nadin Morales, a young Guna resident of Gardi Sugdub, said she is eager to start a new life on the mainland of Panama. The new town has more than 300 two-bedroom houses, paved roads, street lighting and a large school.

It’s a sharp contrast to living conditions on the island, where he lives in an overcrowded house with four different families. Like many homes there, conditions have become challenging due to overcrowding.

The small island has overcrowding problems. Many houses were built with very little space between them. As a result, people are also forced to live side by side within their own homes.

“In one of the houses, we saw that there were 17 people living in them,” he told CNN Ana Spalding, social scientist, also from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute who lives in Panama.

“From conversations with community leaders, they had long felt that, in addition to the changes they were seeing in the climate, there were too many people,” the scientist reported.

The overcrowding has had consequences for the Guna’s health, access to water and children’s education, said Lopez, the Guna leader.

These problems become even more challenging when a storm’s strong winds and rain batter islands or flood people’s homes.

Climate change is hitting the Guna people on many fronts.

Not only does much of the water from melting ice in places like Greenland end up in the tropics, but the excess heat is also causing the world’s oceans to swell, raising sea levels even further.

This heat is also intensifying tropical storms and making them more destructive.

But the Guna are used to finding their own means of protection.

Residents extract coral from the ocean and pile it with rocks to build barriers between their homes and the water. They work for a while, but they are a stopgap at best.

Opinions among the Guna people about whether the climate crisis is responsible for their relocation are divergent and the divide is often generational.

Victor Peretz, a 34-year-old Guna Yala resident who works in the tourism industry, said his 60-year-old father tells him that climate change is normal and seasonal.

Peretz, on the other hand, believes that the climate crisis could bring changes to the island in the coming decades.

“Climate change is serious,” the resident told CNN . But he said it was overcrowding that made the relocation more urgent.

“The reality is that it’s more about overpopulation, because families are growing,” Peretz reported.

Spalding, the social scientist, said the generational divide could also determine who stays on the island and who leaves. “Younger people, like young families, are going to move,” she said.

Disconnected from the sea

The government-built town of Isber Yala could not be more different from the homes of the Guna people on the island.

Rows of prefab two-bedroom homes line asphalt roads. Each villa is identical: dusty cream single-story structures with orange-red roofs, a far cry from the island’s mix of cabins and houses.

But there are growing concerns that the move was rushed. The city still has no access to water and no functional health center.

Lopez, the Guna leader, said that although people were ready to move, there were no working lights and basic services like garbage collection were not planned.

“There is a lack of planning at a social level, at an economic level, at an environmental level and at an ecological level”, he stated.

Some Guna people are disappointed because the new houses do not respect their traditional way of life. His new city was built inland, disconnected from the sea. But Lopez highlighted that the Guna people have already adapted once.

“Many years ago, the Guna people arrived on the island coasts of the Caribbean Sea, but we originate from the mountains, rivers and forests,” he told CNN .

Returning to the land is necessary to “improve the quality of life, especially for children”, added the indigenous leader.

There are also logistical problems. Although the government has financed the construction of the houses, it is still necessary to figure out how the Guna people will pay for or access basic needs such as electricity and water.

Those left behind on Gardi Sugdub and the other Guna Yala islands are watching with great interest, Lopez said, and may follow if the initial relocations are a success.

The Guna people will be further from danger on the mainland, but in a rapidly warming world, there is no safe place.

And there is a clear injustice in this, said social scientist Spalding.

Like many indigenous groups around the world, the Guna Yala have contributed a negligible amount to the climate crisis, but they are stuck on the front lines.

Paton, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s physical monitoring program in Panama, gives regular lectures on climate science on some of the Guna Yala islands.

The expert recalled a recent episode, when members of the community expressed their frustration with the world.

“Because for the Guna it was very simple,” he said, “just stop damaging Mother Earth.”