The island of Jean Charles has been almost completely swallowed by water due to rising sea levels. The small community living there is being forced to abandon it.
In the south of Louisiana, on the island of Jean Charles, a small community of Native Americans from the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe has lived for centuries. Today, however, they are being forced to abandon their land and their homes, never to return — they have become the first climate refugees in the United States.
Rising sea levels, caused by global warming and erosion, have submerged around 98 per cent of the island over the past sixty years — it has shrunk from eighteen kilometres in length and eight in width in the 1950s to its current three kilometres in length and half a kilometre in width. The relocation of the community, made up of around four hundred people, has therefore become necessary. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has allocated 48 million dollars to evacuate all residents of the island and move them to another island further north. The operation, labelled with the euphemistic term "resettlement", is expected to take two years.
Compounding the situation caused by global warming is the significant impact of the oil industry, which is particularly active in Louisiana. The constant extraction activity has caused subsidence, an irreversible phenomenon that results in the downward movement of a region. Louisiana's lagoons have been drastically altered by the construction of thousands of canals and pipelines, making them far more vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events.
According to the US federal agency Noaa (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), sea levels are rising at a rate of approximately one centimetre per year. It is therefore anticipated that in fifty years' time the island of Jean Charles will be completely below sea level, swallowing not only the homes of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw but also important nesting sites for several species of seabird.
Leaving one's home and land is never easy, which is why seventy people still live on the island and are currently refusing to go. "I've lived my whole life on the island and I intend to die here," said Hilton Chaisson, a resident of the island of Jean Charles. The fear is that what is happening in Louisiana is only the beginning, and that this small island, home to a community of Native Americans, is a kind of window into the future.