Sun Come Up: A Film about Climate Change Refugees

Short Synopsis

Sun Come Up is a character-driven documentary that follows the relocation of some of the world’s first climate change refugees, the Carteret Islanders – a matrilineal society of 3,000 people living on a chain of low-lying islands in the South Pacific Ocean.

Description/Treatment

SYNOPSIS
Sun Come Up is a character-driven documentary that follows the relocation of some of the world’s first climate change refugees, the Carteret Islanders – a matrilineal society of 3,000 people living on a chain of low-lying islands in the South Pacific Ocean.

The Carteret Islanders inhabit some of the most remote and pristine islands in the South Pacific, an atoll located 50 miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The islanders share a rich tradition of music, dance, and storytelling. For centuries, they have lived on a diet of fresh fish, bananas and vegetables, and without cars, electricity, or running water. Their carbon footprint leaves one of the lightest impressions on the planet.

Now, however, a modern crisis has intruded upon them, and their idyllic community is on the precipice of dramatic change. Climate change is destroying this far-flung island chain, eroding the shoreline at an alarming rate. During the high tide season, the ocean floods the island, salt water contaminating crops and fresh water wells. Beaches are littered with fallen coconut trees, their roots devoured by salt, and inland gardens have turned to swamps, creating a fresh breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.  

For twenty years, the islanders have fought to contain the ocean. They built clamshell and rock dams—similar in size to stone walls that define property boundaries around wealthy American estates—and planted coconut trees along the shoreline to obstruct the encroaching sea’s path. Despite these efforts, however, the islanders predict their homeland will be uninhabitable by 2015. The islanders face three urgent problems: the population is increasing, access to food and water is decreasing, and the islands are shrinking rapidly.

This is what compelled Carteret Islander Ursula Rakova and the island elders to create the non-profit organization Tulele Peisa, or Riding the Waves on One’s Own. Ursula’s clan owned Huene, a picturesque island the size of a football field that was sliced in half by the ocean 15 years ago. Women are the customary owners of land on the Carteret Islands, and traditionally Ursula would pass on ownership to her daughters and granddaughters. Instead she is charged with relocating the families from the Carteret Islands to Tinputz, Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea 50 miles south of the atoll.

In a land where generations lived simply and peacefully by the sea, the island elders, like Ursula, fear the sudden loss of tradition will leave the young islanders spiritually and materially bereft. There is cause for concern. On the Bougainville mainland, where the islanders plan to relocate, a 10-year civil war with Papua New Guinea—sparked by locals’ outrage over environmentally destructive copper mining practices by international companies—devastated villages and claimed 10 percent of the population. Many young people remain traumatized by the “crisis,” as it’s called in Bougainville; some villagers hold on to guns they fashioned during the conflict from the remnants of World War II weapons. Substance abuse, HIV and violence are all persistent problems.

Leaving behind a peaceful existence on a remote atoll, the Carteret Islanders must adapt to an island still suffering the aftershock of war. In an effort to smooth the way for this change, Ursula brings together young people from the Carteret Islands and from Bougainville. Together, they travel around Bougainville, talking to villagers about climate change and explaining the need for the islanders to relocate.

The stakes for this tour are high. Two previous relocation efforts have already failed, the first because of the civil war, and the second because tensions between the two communities erupted. The villagers burned the Carteret Islanders’ houses and chased them from the land. The Carteret Islanders moved back home.  Soon, however, they will have no home to return to.

This is a story about the human face of climate change and a people faced with the loss of a land in which their identity rests. It is also a story about two communities, both fractured by environmental devastation, uniting over a common purpose. Climate change and environmental protection are not abstractions to them. Because of what they have been through, they share a commitment to preserving their small corner of the globe. It is a cause that could bind them going forward.

Though the story of one remote community, the fate of the Carteret Islanders is not unique. Human rights organizations predict climate change could displace up to 250 million people by mid-century. This story shows what it takes to move a village and is an example of what millions of people, from the mountains of Peru, to Bangladesh, to drought stricken regions of Africa, will face due to climate change. It also raises questions of global culpability, climate change and security, and how to be a responsible citizen in a world of diminishing natural resources.