Colombia's Caribbean jewel slowly sinks as sea waters rise March 14, 2024

Kelly Mendoza has seen two of her neighbours lose their homes and, at night, the 31-year-old woman hears the waves crashing against her bedroom wall. /Luis Acosta)

By AFP - Agence France Presse

View of a grave destroyed by rising sea levels in the cemetery on Tierra Bomba island in Cartagena, Colombia.

Photos by Luis ACOSTA,

A skeleton lies exposed to the weather as the turquoise waters of the Caribbean lap the shores near a destroyed tomb - a grim reminder that the Colombian city of Cartagena is slowly being swallowed up by the sea.

With low-lying communities around the world at the forefront of the fight against the climate crisis, Cartagena is visibly vulnerable.

In Tierra Bomba, a small island in Cartagena Bay, the cemetery, once built at a safe distance from the coast, has been devastated by repeated flooding, while houses have fallen into the waves.

Kelly Mendoza has seen two of her neighbours lose their homes and, at night, the 31-year-old woman hears the waves crashing against her bedroom wall.

"I get scared when the wave hits the wall, because I think it's going to fall," and "I'm going to find myself in the sea, in my bed."

Cartagena, a tourist hotspot in the north of the country, could be almost a metre underwater by the end of this century, according to experts.

"The rise in sea level in the coastal area of Cartagena is due to two factors," said Canadian environmental scientist Marko Tosic, one of the authors of a study showing that the waters there are rising faster than the global average.

He said that global warming - which is melting the polar ice caps and glaciers - has been combined with erosion and the "sinking of the earth... due to tectonic factors" and the presence of submarine volcanoes, to accelerate the rise in sea levels in the region.

These volcanic formations "are muddy and, little by little, gravity exerts pressure" on them, causing the land to flatten and the city to sink, Tosic added.

The study, published in 2021 by the scientific journal Nature, said that the sea level in Cartagena has risen by around 7.02 millimetres (0.27 inches) a year since the beginning of the 21st century, "a higher rate" than the global average of 2.9 millimetres.

The researchers said that the sea in the bay could rise by 26 centimetres by 2050 and 76 centimetres by 2100.

It's a "very small change, we're talking about millimetres over the years, but... the floods will be felt," said Tosic.

On the mainland, AFP recently saw staff at a flooded restaurant struggling to remove the water that was hitting their customers' feet.

Cartagena, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a colonial-era city that was once a point of conflict between the European powers vying for control of the "New World", which led the Spanish to build some of South America's most extensive military fortifications around the city.

The historic city centre, the huge fortress and the beautiful beaches have made Cartagena a tourist attraction.

Now machines are hard at work building a new fortress: 4.5 kilometres (2.7 miles) of wall to protect the city from encroaching waters.

Along the coast, tall buildings are just a few metres from the ocean.

According to the mayor's office, around 80% of the city's neighbourhoods, which are largely flat and at sea level, would be at risk of flooding without this protection.

Tosic warned that poor populations have fewer tools to protect themselves from the forces of nature.

Mauricio Giraldo, a representative of local fishermen, complains that the breakwater protects luxury hotels and tourist spots, but is changing the sea current and offers no protection to the areas where the most vulnerable live.

Over the decades, the sea "devastated 250 houses in the community, the health centre, docks... it took away several community halls, electrical infrastructure" and the cemetery, said community leader Mirla Aaron in Tierra Bomba.

The island is home to "black communities that were enslaved" and that "refuse to lose their identity", said the 53-year-old leader. "We are not leaving, we will not abandon this territory because it is ours."

At the age of 87, Ines Jimenez recalls how, when she was younger, she had to move back in with her parents after their house was flooded.

She spent much of her life watching her neighbours flee "a little further back" from the sea.

By David SALAZAR