'Life goes on' - Panamanian islanders relocated due to rising sea levels June 5, 2024

Around 1,200 inhabitants of Carti Sugtupu island are being relocated to the mainland of Panama (MARTIN BERNETTI)

By AFP - Agence France Presse

'Life goes on' - Panamanian islanders relocated due to rising sea levels

Alberto Lopez prepares breakfast with water lapping at his ankles. The day started with rain, and his ruined house on the Panamanian island of Carti Sugtupu was flooded, not for the first time.

Lopez is one of 1,200 indigenous residents of the island who are being relocated to the mainland as rising sea levels due to global warming threaten to permanently devour their ancestral home.

The community is the first in Panama to be displaced due to climate change.

Since Monday, the residents have been packing their bags and taking their belongings by boat to the Nuevo Carti (New Carti) settlement, built for them by the government in the indigenous region of Guna Yala, on Panama's Caribbean coast.

On the island, Lopez lives in a small house with a dirt floor, no bathroom, and intermittent electricity.

In preparation for the move, his family is piling clothes and other scarce belongings on a small table by the front door, along with cleaning materials and a Bible.

Their destination, Nuevo Carti, has houses with two bedrooms, a living-dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room - all with drinking water and electricity.

Each house is about 41 square meters (441 square feet) on a 300 square meter plot, and there are common cultural spaces and facilities for people with disabilities.

Conditions are undoubtedly better, but the community has mixed feelings.

“We are sad because if this island disappears, a part of our heart, of our culture, will disappear with it,” said Lopez, who was born in Carti Sugtupu 72 years ago.

As a child, he fished there, like most of the island's inhabitants, and worked in the fields on the mainland.

His mother sent him to study in Panama City, where he lived for more than 30 years before returning home.

“I came back because my heart wanted me here, and this house is the one my family left me,” Lopez told AFP.

“My grandmother, grandfather, and aunt died here... it won't be the same, but I have to move on because life goes on,” he added.

- 'A brutal change' -

In Carti Sugtupu, which is the size of five soccer fields, Lopez and his fellow islanders lived in overcrowded conditions and with few basic services.

They use communal toilets with pieces of wood placed as seats.

The community lived off fishing, harvesting starch crops such as cassava and bananas, traditional textile production, and some tourism.

Their homes were flooded regularly and the government predicts that by 2050 Carti Sugtupu will be completely submerged, along with several other islands in the archipelago of 350, of which only 49 are inhabited.

All of them are between 50 centimeters (19 inches) and one meter (about three feet) above sea level.

Scientists say that climate change is causing sea levels to rise, mainly due to meltwater from warming glaciers and ice sheets.

President Laurentino Cortizo recently said that the government was studying which other communities might have to be relocated next.

On Monday, the first day of the mass relocation, the police helped the community move their belongings to their new homes.

On a small pier, the police helped load furniture, buckets of clothes, plastic chairs, some household appliances, and a stuffed animal for the 15-minute boat trip.

“I'm sad to leave this house,” said Idelicia Avila, 42, adding: “We're moving because there's no room for us here” on the island.

Nuevo Carti was built by the government for 12.2 million dollars, transferring ownership to the community.

Lopez will live in house number 256 with three sisters and a daughter.

He hopes to grow pumpkins, cassava, pineapples, or bananas to sell and is already planning where the furniture and appliances will be placed - and even contemplating a possible extension to his new home.

“Here we have everything to shower... there (on the island) we don't have that,” he said while showing AFP his new bathroom.

“Of course everyone is happy, but it's a brutal change.”

By Juan José Rodríguez

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