Photo essay: The Caribbean island affected by climate change-induced rising sea levels

Island inhabitants will move to mainland Panama, putting their culture and way of life at risk

The island of Carti Sugtupu, in the Indigenous Guna Yala Comarca, Panama, in the Caribbean Sea. All photos: AFP

A Guna man with his family paddles a canoe off the island of Carti Sugtupu

A house destroyed by the sea on the island of Carti Sugtupu

On the tiny Caribbean island, hundreds of people are preparing to pack up and move to escape rising waters that threaten to engulf their homes in time to come

A Guna woman slices bananas on the island of Carti Sugtupu

Guna community leaders, known as Saglas, lie in hammocks while receiving people at the congress on the island

Magdalena Martinez cooking at her home

A Guna teacher with pupils at the school on the island of Carti Sugtupu

A Guna fisherman

Teacher Braulio Navarro at his house on Carti Sugtupu

A Guna family gazes at the continent from the island of Carti Sugtupu

On a tiny Caribbean island, hundreds of people are preparing to pack up and move to escape the rising waters threatening to engulf their already precarious homes.

Surrounded by idyllic clear waters, the densely populated island of Carti Sugtupu off Panama's north coast has barely an inch to spare with houses crammed together – some jutting out into the sea on stilts.

The island's Indigenous community of fewer than 2,000 souls scrapes by without drinking water or sanitation.

They live off fishing, the harvesting of starchy crops like cassava and plantain, traditional textile production and a bit of tourism.

It is not an easy life, with intense heat and a lack of public services adding to the discomfort of overcrowded conditions on an island the size of five football fields.

And now, climate change-induced sea level rise is threatening to make life even more difficult.

The island of Nurdub, near Carti Sugtupu, another island in the Indigenous Guna Yala Comarca, Panama. AFP

With homes facing flooding on a regular basis, experts say the sea will engulf Carti Sugtupu and dozens of neighboring islands in the Guna Yala region by the end of the century.

Forty-nine of the isles are populated, and are less than a metre above sea level.

"We have noticed that the tide has risen," retired teacher Magdalena Martinez, 73, said as she sat embroidering a brightly coloured toucan on to a mola cloth traditional to the Guna people on Carti Sugtupu.

"We think we're going to sink, we know it's going to happen," she said.

Martinez is one of hundreds of inhabitants of the island expecting to move soon to a settlement on mainland Panama recently built by the government – a move that may save the islanders, but puts at risk their culture and way of life.

"This will change our lifestyle quite a bit," Martinez said. But, she added, "it won't change our spirit, it won't change our habits".

Steven Paton, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama said: "The fact is that with sea levels rising as a direct cause of climate change, almost all the islands are going to be abandoned by the end of this century."

'There is no room'

On Carti Sugtupu, there is no drinking water, and residents have to go out in boats to collect it from rivers or buy it on the mainland.

Few have reliable electricity. Most residents receive a few hours of power a day from a public generator. A few have solar panels feeding their homes, which are built of zinc and wood, with earth floors.

None have their own toilets, and residents have to visit communal cubicles at the ends of piers where wooden boards perched over the sea serve as latrines.

"There is no room to expand homes or for children to play," Human Rights Watch said in a recent report on the island.

"Floods and storms have made life even harder ... affecting housing, water, health and education. Such extreme weather is only expected to become more common as the climate crisis accelerates," it said.

After years of promises and delays, the government has announced that by the end of this year or early 2024 it will be ready to move families to the mainland, a 15-minute boat ride away, where it has built a new neighbourhood that includes a school.

A Guna Indigenous man paddles his canoe as he fishes in the island of Carti Sugtupu. AFP

"We are building 300 homes for 300 families, with an average of five people per family," said Marcos Suira, national director of engineering and architecture at the Ministry of Housing and Territorial Planning.

"It's a pilot plan."

Each family will have 300 square metres, including a two-bedroom house, drinking water and electricity, according to the government.

Resident teacher Braulio Navarro, 62, said he has to cross the island every morning just to go to the toilet.

He cannot wait to move.

"I have no alternative but to go in search of a better quality of life," Navarro said.

"I know that there will be 24-hour electricity, there will be fans, air conditioning, there will be a great benefit for my family."