Global warming effects on Carteret Island Pt. 1

[music]

[Steve Marshall] It's a pristine atoll
ring that only just breaks through

the surface of the South Pacific,

an idyllic dot in Melanesia.
The people of the Carterets

live from the sea and what tiny land they
have. Two thousand islanders squeezed

into just over half a square kilometer.
The islanders may have had little

inside world, but they claim the
outside world is destroying them.

They say they are doomed.

>>The islands are sinking.

We do see with our own eyes
that our islands are sinking.

We love the place,
we love the islands

but it's sad to see
this island gone, finished.

[theme song]

[Colleen McEdwards] Hello and
welcome to World's Untold Stories.

I'm Colleen McEdwards. A recent report
on global warming warned that entire

cultures are at risk of being wiped-out
if nothing is done.

There's still a lot of debate about
whether rising sea levels and rising

temperatures are the result of pollution,
or simply normal cycles of climate change,

but there's one group of people that
doesn't need any convincing about this.

In the documentary 'That Sinking Feeling,'
Steve Marshall visits a group of islands

in the South Pacific that seem to be
disappearing one hut, one garden,

one village at a time.

[music]

The people of the Carterets are desperate.
Lacking in food, their

livelihoods destroyed. Four hundred years
of occupation is about to end.

While the best scientific minds in the
world argue whether sea levels are rising

by millimeters or centimeters, here
predictions mean nothing. The damage

has already been done. What's happening
here is extraordinary. Since the 1950s,

the sea has risen at a phenomenal rate,
and no one can explain it.

[water splashing]

The Carteret people are at war with the
sea. The biggest island, Han, is less than

a kilometer long, and ringed with broken
sea walls.

The islanders built rock and clam barriers
in a futile effort to hold back the rising

seas.

Island Chairman, Andreas Ruben's ancestors
arrived here centuries ago. But his own

children will be the last of the family
to be born here.

[Ruben] We are right where my
grandfather's house was-- and the

shoreline was out from my grandfather's
house... was out about 18 meters.

[Marshall] So the shoreline used to be
another 18 to 20 meters out there?

[Ruben] Yeah. And out there, there was
coconut trees and some other fruit gardens.

[music]

[Marshall] The people can live off the
land no longer. Santol, breadfruit,

and banana used to be part of a balanced
diet for the islanders. Now, the seawater

that washes into the gardens at high
tide has destroyed everything.

This is the garden of mother of three,
Theresa Hedsey. Fruit once flourished.

Now all that's left is coconut trees.

[Hedsey] It means that I will have no
banana now to eat and I will eat the

coconut only without banana, because
the sea spoils my garden.

[Marshall] Fallen coconut trees litter
the beaches everywhere. Their roots

eroded by the rising seas. At low tide,
you can see where the gardens used to be,

along with the stumps of coconut trees
that grew here only twenty years ago.

At high tide, the trees are completely
swamped.

[water lapping]

[Hedsey] At the moment now, the sea rises
and has washed away all the roots of the

coconut trees. The coconut cannot be a
big fruit, only small ones.

[music]

[Marshall] As day breaks in the Carteret's
lagoon, a supply ship from Bougainville

arrives at the outer reef. This battered
ship has no anchor, and has

engine trouble.

But the islanders are only interested
in what's onboard.

The emergency rations of rice won't go
far, but it's all that can be unloaded

from a drifting ship.

>>If the ship doesn't come, the people
just go hungry as usually is the case.

[Marshall] Bougainville's Minister
for Atolls is onboard too.

Taehu Pais is about
the last person these

people want to see, because of what
he's come to tell them.

[Taehu Pais] As an islander myself,
I feel very sorry for the people.

I feel for them.

Speaking from the bottom of my heart,
I mean it, very sorry that the situation

has to turn out this way.

[Speaking foreign language]

The rice shipment has brought relief from
a monotonous diet. But Theresa knows

it won't last with the extra-hungry mouths
of her extended family.

[speaking foreign language]

[Hedsey] If not rice, we'll just live
on coconut only.

We can just eat coconut only with fish.

[Marshall] Island Chairman, Andreas
Ruben, takes me on a tour of the five

other tiny islands in the chain. The
destruction is striking. If there was

any doubt that the sea levels were
rising, you only have to look here

at the island of Huene. This used to
be one island, but as the locals will

tell you, about 15 years ago, the rising
seas began to slice right through the

middle of it, the high tides never let up,
and now the island is completely divided--

Huene 1 and Huene 2.

[coconut slicing]

[Marshall] Remarkably, three families
managed to survive on fish and coconuts

on an island the size of a football field.
Selena Netoy has given birth to seven

children on the island, but fears her days
living here are numbered.

[Netoy] Our houses are getting closer
and closer to the sea.

The sea is coming closer to us.
Maybe one day a tidal wave will come

and just sweep every one of us out--
our houses and everything, our kids...

So... we never know when this will happen,
only God knows when this will happen.

[music]