Aug 31, 2015

WITH each passing storm, a tiny Alaskan island sinks further into the sea and further into oblivion.

Soon those who call it home will have to pack up their things and leave. The school will be under water. So too will the handful of homes that litter the black sand bordering the unforgiving Chukchi Sea.

Four-hundred people call Kivalina home. Shelby, a 13-year-old girl, is one of them. She says “the ocean is slowly eating away our island” and she’s not being a melodramatic teenager.

Experts say Kivalina, which at its highest is four metres above sea level, will meet its watery grave within 10 years. The island that was once home to eskimo villagers will exist only in photographs and stories.

Around the island, villagers have built rock walls and used giant sand bags to hold back water. Previously a natural ice barrier formed during the colder months to do the job for them, but warming temperatures mean the ice forms later and melts earlier each year.

Hundreds of kilometres to the south another small community is changing before its inhabitants’ eyes. Newtok, Alaska, home to 350 people, is losing as much as 30 metres of flat land a year, locals say.

Closer to Australia, small Pacific island states like Kiribati and Tuvalu are suffering similar fates.

Populations who’ve lived on these islands for centuries are becoming part of a 21st century phenomenon. These are the climate refugees.