Rising sea drives Panama islanders to mainland

By Sean Mattson; editing by Catherine Bremer CARTI SUGDUB, Panama, June 12 (Reuters) – Rising seas from global warming, coming after years of coral reef destruction, are forcing thousands of indigenous Panamanians to leave their ancestral homes on low-lying Caribbean islands. Seasonal winds, storms and high tides combine to submerge the tiny islands, crowded with huts of yellow cane and faded palm fronds, leaving them ankle-deep in emerald water for days on end. Pablo Preciado, leader of the island of Carti Sugdub, remembers that in his childhood floods were rare, brief and barely wetted his toes. “Now it’s something else. It’s serious,” he said. The increase of a few inches in flood depth is consistent with a global sea level rise over Preciado’s 64 years of life and has been made worse by coral mining by the islanders that reduced a buffer against the waves. Carti Sugdub is one of a handful of islands in an archipelago off Panama’s northeastern coast, where the government says climate change threatens the livelihood of nearly half of the 32,000 semi-autonomous Kuna people. The 2,000 inhabitants of Carti Sugdub plan to move to coastal areas within the Kuna’s autonomous territory on the Panama mainland. They are eyeing foothills a half-hour walk from the swampy beach areas. “The water level is rising. The move is imminent,” said Preciado, who has been leading a group of villagers clearing tropical forest for the new settlement. … If the islanders abandon their homes as planned, the exodus will be one of the first blamed on rising sea levels and global warming. … Sea levels rose about 17 cm (about 7 inches) over the last century and experts say the rate is accelerating. In 2007, the United Nations predicted a rise of 18 to 59 cms (7-23 inches) by 2100 but that did not include the accelerated melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. … “Sometimes the community is flooded up to the knees,” said Helen Perez, the schoolmaster at Carti Mulatupu, as his 120 students ran around a sandy school yard by an eroded concrete pier. “The community has taken the decision to move to land.” Chani Morris, an 82-year-old fisherman, is ready to abandon the islet of Coibita he helped build out of coral 33 years ago. He said he doesn’t sleep well since a flood engulfed the island, destroyed huts and carried away dugout canoes. “The sea is very bothersome, sometimes it scares me at night,” said Morris, as he fashioned fish traps out of chicken wire. “I’m just waiting for the others to decide when we can move and I’m going to go with them.”