Rising sea levels displace American tribes

A small Native American community in coastal Louisiana is to be resettled after losing nearly all its land partly due to rising seas, a first in the United States. The band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, a Native American tribe living in the Louisiana coastal wetlands, has lost some 98 percent of its land since the 1950s.

This is the first time an entire community has had to be relocated due in part to rising sea levels, said Marion McFadden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The land loss is also due to factors such as erosion and sediment mismanagement, a Louisiana official said.

The band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw has lived on the Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana's coastal south since the 1800s. From a peak of some 400 inhabitants, only around 100 remain. Climate advocacy group Climate Nexus said the relocation of the tribe was creating new "refugees" of climate change. But Louisiana and federal government officials offered a different interpretation.

The relocation would be subsidized by around $48 million in government funds, said Forbes, and would take a few years to complete. Louisiana's coast has been sinking at a fast pace compared to most U.S. coastal areas, a phenomenon officials attribute to sea levels rise but also erosion, the official said. Sea levels have already risen by some eight inches in coastal Louisiana over the last 50 years or so.

Reflecting on the tribe's attachment to Isle de Jean Charles, he recalled his late grandfather's prophetic words."He said...'The people will have to leave from the island'. But he said you all don't disturb the dead that are buried there because now a lot are in the water where the graves were at.(The writer is with Thomson Reuters Foundation)