Around 300 families will be forced to leave the small island of Gardi Sugdub in northern Panama, obliged to abandon the homes they have lived in all their lives.
On a small island off Panama's Caribbean coast, some 300 families are already packing up their belongings in preparation for a drastic change in their lives. Generation upon generation who grew up on Gardi Sugdub, living a life devoted to the sea and to tourism, will exchange it for the mainland (the continent). In a sense, they are doing so voluntarily.
The residents of Gardi Sugdub are the first of 63 communities in Panama along the Caribbean and Pacific coasts which, according to government officials and scientists, will be forced to relocate over the coming decades as sea levels rise.