Residents of the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea are on a “green migration,” contributor Thibault Le Pivain reports for Mongabay.
The islanders are leaving their homes due to food shortages resulting from environmental degradation and rising sea levels, and sailing to a larger island in the country, taking with them plants that play important roles in their way of life.
“We’re not just leaving. We’re trying to bring a part of our islands with us,” resident Maria Kamin told Mongabay after they moved to the main island of Bougainville, on lands donated by the Catholic Church.
Back in 2005, when the Carteret Islanders first announced their plans to relocate, they were dubbed the “world’s first climate change refugees.” Since then, Tulele Peisa, a community organization, has coordinated the relocation 17 families to Bougainville. An additional 14 million kina ($3.5 million) is needed to relocate 350 more families, or half of the island’s remaining population, Ursula Rakova, executive director of Tulele Peisa, told Mongabay.
Rising tides and saltwater intrusion have killed staple crops in the Carteret Islands, Rakova said. The groundwater has become too salty to drink, while fish stocks have declined due to heat waves and illegal fishing by foreign vessels.
The 17 families who have moved brought with them hundreds of plant specimens, replanting them alongside local flora at their new home in Bougainville. The result is a thriving forest of more than 175,000 trees and plants, Le Pivain writes. This way, the residents say they hope to not just preserve the biodiversity of Carteret Island but also maintain the community’s culture and sense of place. Some of the plants they relocated include seedlings of essential crops like breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis), giant swamp taro (Cyrtosperma merkusii), coconut and medicinal herbs.
Although the Carteret Islands and Bougainville share many species, the migrating families wanted to bring their own varieties, Le Pivain reports. Carteret breadfruit is seedless, for example, while its coconuts are said to be sweeter and some of the medicinal plants aren’t found on Bougainville.
Christian Giardina, forestry director at the Institute of Pacific Islands, told Mongabay that such “canoe plants” have long been part of the human migration history through the Pacific. It was through canoe voyages that crops such as taro, banana and sweet potato came to Hawai‘i from Polynesia.
Carol Farbotko, a researcher at Griffith University, Australia, said that while such “green migrations” can become part of relocation plans for vulnerable communities, the transfer of species needs to be carefully considered using both local knowledge and science. There’s a risk of introducing invasive species that can harm native wildlife, which is why ecological compatibility is important to consider, she added.
This is a summary of “In a Noah’s Ark move, PNG migrants bring thousands of trees to safer ground” by Thibault Le Pivain.
Banner image of the Bougainville forest planted by Carteret Islanders, by Thibault Le Pivain for Mongabay
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