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01-08-2023
PANAMA CITY: As climate change and rising sea levels threaten the island of Gardi Sugdub, leaders in the local Indigenous community are increasingly worried that the Panamanian government will fail to follow through on promises to help with relocation.
In a 52-page report on Monday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said “ongoing government delays” pose a serious threat to the human rights of Panama’s Indigenous Guna people.
According to the group’s findings, the government has repeatedly failed to provide housing and infrastructure to a new community site on higher ground, despite repeated assurances and plans stretching back to 2010.
“Panama should follow through on its promises and provide immediate support so the Gardi Sugdub community can relocate with dignity,” said Erica Bower, a climate displacement researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.
“It’s not too late for the government to take this opportunity and create a blueprint that coastal communities elsewhere in Panama and globally can turn to as they confront the climate change crisis.”
Gardi Sugdub or “Crab Island” is part of an archipelago on Panama’s Caribbean coast expected to face “the most severe impacts” of climate change, according to the report.
At its highest point, the island is only one metre (3.2 feet) above sea level. And as the tides creep higher and higher, the island’s Guna residents are finding themselves with less and less space.
An estimated 1,300 Guna people are packed onto an island only 300 metres (984 feet) long and 125 metres (410 feet) wide. And yearly floods lasting up to two weeks at a time have caused significant damage to their homes and livelihoods.
“When I got home, the pier and the toilet had washed away,” one Gardi Sugdub resident, Eustacio Valdez, told Human Rights Watch, as he recalled one flood in 2008.
“The canoes were gone. There were high waves. It was flooded for a week. School was suspended.”
In 2010, the Guna community on Gardi Sugdub arrived at a heavy conclusion: The only sustainable solution was to relocate to a different site. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
