Carteret Islands

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view of Huene from Iolassa Island. Huene used to be one island but has now been bisected by rising seas

The Carteret Islands (also known as Carteret Atoll, Tulun or Kilinailau Islands/Atoll), Han, Jangain, Yesila, Yolasa and Piul are part of Papua New Guinea located 86 kilometres northeast of Bougainville in the South Pacific at 4°45'S, 155°24'E. The atoll is a scattering of low lying islands in a horseshoe shape stretching around 30 kilometers in north-south direction, with a total land area of 0.6 square kilometers and a maximum elevation of 1.5 meters above sea level.

The islands were named after the British navigator Philip Carteret who discovered them in the sloop Swallow in 1767. As of 2005 about one thousand people live on the islands. Han is the most significant island with partial (but rapidly dying due to saltwater introgression) tree cover, the others being small islets in the lagoon.

It was widely reported in November 2005 that the islands have progressively become uninhabitable, with an estimate of their total submersion by 2015. The islanders have fought a more than twenty years battle against the rising ocean, building sea walls and planting mangroves. However, storm surges and high tides continue to wash away homes, destroy vegetable gardens and contaminate fresh water supplies. On November 24, 2005, the Papua New Guinean government authorized the government-funded total evaucation of the islands, 10 families at a time; the evacuation is expected to be complete by 2007. It has been estimated that by 2015, Carteret Atoll will be largely submerged and entirely uninhabitable.

This has been attributed to rising sea levels, indeed it has been said that the islanders are the first climate refugees due to sea level rise attributed to global warming and climate change.

In 1999 two uninhabited Kiribati islets, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea in Tarawa lagoon, disappeared underwater.

[edit] Disagreement over causes of flooding

Fred Terry, the director of the United Nations Development Project on Bougainville, said the destruction of reefs in the Carterets with dynamite might be the cause of flooding on Carteret Islands. "During the Bougainville conflict people went to the atolls to get away from [the conflict]," Mr Terry said. "The islanders had all these extra mouths to feed and needed more fish. They have a history as reef destroyers."

Paul Tobasi, the atolls' District Manager with Papua New Guinea's Bougainville province, denied that reefs were being destroyed by dynamite[1]. Tobasi and regional environmentalist groups have stated that the flooding is tied to global warming.

It has also been suggested that the movement of tectonic plates could be responsible. The islands lie in one of the most complex tectonic areas of the earth. They sit next to a plate convergence zone at the boundary of the Pacific Plate, Indo-Australian Plate, and South Bismark Plate on a subduction zone next to the New Hebrides trench (Bougainville Trench), where the earth's crust is disappearing. There is an active volcano on the Bougainville Island, 86km away.