30 January, 2024

Lucy Sherriff in Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana Welcome to your latest edition of Future Earth. Carl is away, so it is coming to you this week from me, Lucy Sherriff. I'm a climate reporter for the BBC, normally based in Los Angeles, but for the past few weeks I've been on the road to see the impact of coastal erosion in what was once a thriving town on Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana. As the island is swallowed by the water, I met the people who once called this stretch of marsh home. Carl will be back in your inbox in two weeks' time, but in the meantime we also explore a once-in-200-years cicada emergence, and the legacy of the last male northern white rhino.  CLIMATE CONVERSATION The towns being wiped off the map Chris Brunet's home, which sustained severe damage on the right-hand side from Hurricane Ida. He camped out underneath his house for days following the storm (Credit: Lucy Sherriff) I stop Chris Brunet mid-sentence and frantically point at the bayou in front of us. The slick, grey triangular fin of a dolphin is weaving in and out of the calm water. "Yes," Brunet replies, laughing at my excitement. "We can stop and watch it if you like." I had been warned about alligators and snakes in Louisiana's marshes, but I certainly hadn't expected dolphins. "When me and my dad would fish in the pirogue (Native American-style canoe)," Brunet explains in his melodic drawl. "We'd see them all the time. And we'd say 'there he goes, eating all our fish'." It's a rare sight for Brunet these days, who last year had to relocate from his childhood home on Isle de Jean Charles, a thin strip of land surrounded by water, which has been getting thinner by the day thanks to coastal erosion. Brunet's tribe were moved 40 miles inland in a $48m (£38m) federal relocation project to escape the water, which has been swallowing the island. Isle de Jean Charles has lost 98% of its land since the 1950s. In fact, Louisiana is losing so much coastal wetlands, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is literally erasing place names from its maps as they're now underwater. Brunet shows a picture of men in a boat trying to rescue someone from their car, following heavy flooding on the island (Credit: Lucy Sherriff) Climate abandonment areas It's a story that will undoubtedly be repeated across the America. More than 3.2 million Americans have already left high flood-risk neighbourhoods, creating "climate abandonment areas". Another 7.5 million may be forced to leave their homes due to flooding over the next 30 years, according to projections. Globally in 2022, 31.8 million people were displaced from their homes within their own countries by weather-related disasters – the highest figure in a decade. About 60% of those were due to flooding, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Relocation schemes like the one Brunet and his community were involved in are one solution to help those most at risk. Even so, Brunet's story is a painful one. He rarely gets to visit the island he called home for so long. He's in a wheelchair, so he relies on friends to bring him there. We stop by his old mailbox, where he still receives the odd piece of junk mail.  His house on the island still stands, although the bedroom is missing – a calling card from Hurricane Ida, which slammed the community in 2021. It would be tough for anyone to leave their home – but for Brunet and his tribe, the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw people, the island was a refuge from the discrimination they suffered for being Native American. "We weren't even allowed to go to the main schools," Brunet, who grew up speaking French, remembers. Now, the tribe must integrate into a place that was once so hostile to them. Native Americans like Brunet's tribe suffer some of the most severe climate impacts in the US because of the degraded land they were forced onto during the colonisation of America. Many still carry the historical trauma of being driven from their ancestral lands. And now, they may have to face it all over again. Read my full report from the Isle de Jean Charles on BBC Future Planet.