Located 1.5km from the coast of Panama, the islet of Carti Sugdupu will have disappeared by 2050 at the latest due to rising water levels. Its inhabitants will settle on dry land by early 2024.
It is a small islet facing the coast of Panama. Its inhabitants, a little over a thousand Kuna indigenous people, are crowded there at the water’s edge in very precarious conditions. The inexorable rise in sea level convinced them to settle on dry land. According to the government, Carti Sugdupu will have disappeared by 2050 at the latest. Seen from the sky, it is a tangle of red, blue and gray roofs between which we can see dirt streets and, here and there, a few rare trees. All around, the sea.
Carti Sugdupu is one of the 365 islands in the archipelago of the indigenous comarca Guna Yala, in northwestern Panama. About fifty, all between 50 cm and one meter above sea level, are inhabited. Some are tiny, like Carti Sugdupu, the size of five football fields.
Its inhabitants live from fishing, tourism and the production, on the continent, of cassava and bananas. Living conditions there are very precarious: there is no drinking water, no sanitary facilities and electricity is intermittent.
Water is collected on the continent directly from rivers or purchased in stores. Electricity comes from a public generator which only runs for a few hours at night. Few have a private generator or solar panels. Simple cabins placed at the end of a pontoon serve as toilets. The floors of the houses are made of dirt, the walls and roofs of wood or sheet metal.
“We know we are going to sink”
And to top it all off, the sea continues to rise. “We noticed that the tide is rising,” Magdalena Martinez, a 73-year-old retired teacher, told AFP while weaving a traditional garment in the family home.
“We think we are going to sink, we know that it will happen, in many more years, but we think of our children, we must find something (…) where they can live in peace,” explains -She.
The government and the indigenous community have been working for more than ten years on a project to relocate 300 families on the continent. The problem of “rising waters” is added to that of “overpopulation”, underlines Marcos Suira, an official from the Panamanian Ministry of Housing.
“With rising sea levels, a direct consequence of climate change, almost all islands will be abandoned by the end of the century,” assures Steven Paton, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI, based in Panama). “Some of the lowest islands (…) are flooded at high tide every month,” he notes.
“I would like to leave quickly”
The rainy season further aggravates the situation. “The island is almost floating at that time, there are floods, it affects us,” complains Braulio Navarro, a teacher at the islet’s primary school.
Aged 62, the man is preparing to move with his family to the continent. “I would like to leave quickly because I know that there we will have electricity 24 hours a day, there will be fans, air conditioning, it will be a great benefit for my family,” he adds.
A recent report from the NGO Human Rights Watch denounces the lack of space “to expand housing or for children to play”. “Floods and storms have made life on the island even more difficult, affecting housing, water, health and education,” it added.
The 300 families will be rehoused by the beginning of 2024, not far from their former island, on a 22-hectare plot of land taken from the forest. Each family will have a plot of land of 300 m2, a house of 49 m2 with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a dining room and a kitchen, as well as drinking water and electricity. They will be able to enlarge their house and have a vegetable garden. A school will be built.
“We are happy,” assures Nelson Morgan, the highest indigenous authority in the community.
Magdalena Martinez dreams of a house where she can “live with dignity”, although she knows that she will miss her island. “I’m happy, but also nostalgic, because I learned to live on the island and I leave a lot of dreams and tears there.”
Source: BFM TV
