Global warming claims first village
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by ALISTER DOYLE
TEGUA ISLAND, Vanuatu (6 Dec 2005) — RISING seas have forced 100 people on a Pacific island to move to higher ground in what may be the first example of a village formally displaced because of modern global warming, a UN report has said.
With coconut palms on the coast already standing in water, inhabitants in the Lateu settlement on Tegua Island in Vanuatu started dismantling their wooden homes in August and moved about 548.64m inland.
“They could no longer live on the coast,” Taito Nakalevu, a climate change expert at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program.
The spokesman was attending a 189-nation conference in Montreal on ways to fight climate change.
King tides, often whipped up by cyclones, had become stronger in recent years and made Lateu uninhabitable by flooding the village four to five times a year.
“We are seeing king tides across the region flooding islands,” he said.
The UN Environment Program (UNEP) said in a statement the Lateu settlement “has become one of, if not the first, to be formally moved out of harm’s way as a result of climate change.”
The scientific panel advised the United Nations seas could rise by almost 0.9m by 2100 because of melting icecaps and warming linked to a build-up of heat trapping gases emitted by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.
Many other coastal communities are vulnerable to rising seas, such as the US city of New Orleans, the Italian city of Venice or settlements in the Arctic where a thawing of sea ice has exposed coasts to erosion by the waves.
Pacific Islanders, many living on coral atolls, are among those most at risk.
Off Papua New Guinea, about 2000 people on the Cantaret Islands are planning to move to nearby Bougainville island, four hours’ boat ride to the southwest.
Two uninhabited Kiribati islands, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater in 1999.
“In Tegua, the dwellings are moving first. The chief has moved, he has to start the process, so his people are now following,” Mr Nakalevu said.
A church would also be dismantled and moved inland.
Mr Nakalevu said the rising seas seemed to be linked to climate change.
It was unknown if the coral base of the island, about 31sq km, might be subsiding. Most villagers rely on yams, beans and other crops grown on higher ground.
To help Lateu, Canada provided $US50,000 ($66,649) to build a system to collect and store up to 36,000 litres of rain water to break dependence on springs by the coast.
SeaDemon Says 