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“If the island sinks, I will sink with it,” Delfino Davies says, his smile not fading for a second. “Before, you could hear children shouting… music everywhere, neighbours arguing,” he says, “but now all the sounds have gone”. His community, living on the tiny low-lying island of Gardi Sugdub, is the first in Panama to be relocated because of climate change. The government has said they face “imminent risk” from rising sea levels, which scientists say are likely to render the island uninhabitable by 2050.
In June last year, most of the residents abandoned this cramped jumble of wooden and tin homes for rows of neat prefabricated houses on the mainland. The relocation has been praised by some as a model for other groups worldwide whose homes are under threat, but even so, it has divided the community. “My father, my brother, my sisters-in-law and my friends are gone,” says Delfino. “Sometimes the children whose families have stayed cry, wondering where their friends have gone,” he says.
Yanisela Vallarino says one evening her young daughter was unwell and she had to arrange transport back to the island late at night to see a doctor. Panamanian authorities told the BBC that construction of a hospital in Isberyala stalled a decade ago over lack of funding. But they said they hoped to revive the plan this year, and were assessing how to create space for remaining residents to move from the island.
Communities around the world will be “inspired” by the way the residents of Gardi Sugdub have confronted their situation, says Erica Bower, a researcher on climate displacement at Human Rights Watch. “We need to learn from these early cases to understand what success even looks like,” she says.
As afternoon arrives, the school activities give way to the shouts and scuffles of football, basketball and volleyball. “I prefer this place to the island because we have more space to play,” says eight-year-old Jerson, before diving for a football.
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