IMAGINE PARADISE

Papua New Guinea

Impression on the impact of climate change on the Carteret Islands. People have to move.
Director, editor | 7'30

CLIMATE CHANGE

Carteret Islands

The Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea have become the world’s first entire community to be displaced by climate change. They’re the first official refugees of global warming–and they’re packing up their lives to move out of the way of ever-rising waters that threaten to overtake their homes and crops. The island they call home will be completely underwater by 2020.
On the Carterets, king tides have washed away their crops and rising sea levels poisoned those that remain with salt. The people are forced to move.

 

Tulele Peisa

Sailing the waves on our

In late 2006 the Council of Elders (CoE) of the Carterets Islands held a series of meetings to discuss the worsening effects of sea surges on their islands. The CoE were concerned that progress in establishing a relocation program for the Carterets people was going very slowly, while the erosion of their islands and the destruction of food gardens as a result of sea water surges was increasing at a very fast pace. As early as 2001, the Bougainville government talked about relocation for the Carterets, but as nothing had ever eventuated, the peppel took their own charge and established a resettlement project on the main land of Bougainville.