Lost to the Sea
Off the coast of Sierra Leone, a remote island once home to thousands of people is on the verge of disappearing into the sea in the face of devastating coastal erosion fuelled, officials say, by rising sea levels and ever more destructive extreme weather events. In just ten years, Nyangai Island has gone from 700m in length to barely 170, and most of its population has been displaced. Lacking the means to construct flood defences, the island's residents can do little but watch as their homes are swept away by the tides. Many of the remaining 400 or so residents, who now live packed tightly together on the last available piece of habitable land, fear that in as little as two years, the island on which their families have lived for generations will have vanished altogether beneath the waves. "My heart is broken," said the island's Chief, Mustafa Kong. "God will decide what happens to us. We're in his hands now".
Off the coast of Sierra Leone, a remote island once home to thousands of people is on the verge of disappearing into the sea in the face of devastating coastal erosion fuelled, officials say, by rising sea levels and ever more destructive extreme weather events. In just ten years, Nyangai Island has gone from 700m in length to barely 170, and most of its population has been displaced. Lacking the means to construct flood defences, the island's residents can do little but watch as their homes are swept away by the tides. Many of the remaining 400 or so residents, who now live packed tightly together on the last available piece of habitable land, fear that in as little as two years, the island on which their families have lived for generations will have vanished altogether beneath the waves. "My heart is broken," said the island's Chief, Mustafa Kong. "God will decide what happens to us. We're in his hands now".