| Title | In Louisiana, the First US Climate Refugees Find a New Safe Haven | |
| Date | Monday September 19 2022, @01:31AM | |
| Author | hubie | |
| Topic | ||
| from the troubled-waters-pay-me-no-mind dept. | ||
The Isle of Jean Charles in Louisiana is slowly being submerged in water:
Joann Bourg stands in front of her new home, about an hour's drive from the low-lying Louisiana island where she grew up — an area gradually sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.
[...] Ms Bourg is one of about a dozen Native Americans from the Isle de Jean Charles who have been relocated to Schriever, less than 60 kilometres to the north-west — the maiden beneficiaries of a federal resettlement grant awarded in 2016.
They are the first so-called "climate refugees" in the United States, forced from their homes due to the consequences of climate change.
[...] Residents are mainly of Native American descent — several tribes sought shelter on the island from rampant government persecution in the 1800s.
But climate change has transformed the island into a symbol of the scourge that plagues much of hurricane-prone Louisiana — coastal erosion.
[...] "This is the first project of its kind in our nation's history," state governor John Bel Edwards, who was on site to see the residents close on their new properties, told AFP.
"We've had people over the years that we would buy their homes out and move them. But we've not done whole communities like this and moved them to one place before because of climate change."
Since the 1930s, Isle de Jean Charles has lost "about 90 per cent" of its surface area to the encroaching bayou waters, explains Alex Kolker, an associate professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
The island was already fragile, but climate change heightens the risks, he says — sea levels are rising, the ground is sinking and erosion is rampant. More frequent and fiercer storms intensify the problem.
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printed from SoylentNews, In Louisiana, the First US Climate Refugees Find a New Safe Haven on 2024-04-19 01:34:51