By:

Saskia de Melker and Melanie Saltzman

Isle de Jean Charles is disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico.

The island has been on the front lines of coastal erosion for decades. The reasons are numerous: sinking land sped up by years of oil and gas exploration, and exacerbated by rising seas and increased storm surges. In just the last 100 years, Louisiana has lost 1,900 square miles of land, including valuable wetland ecosystems.

The land loss has gotten so bad that the entire Native American tribe that calls the island home is now moving to a parcel of higher land further north.

The relocation is happening thanks in large part to funding from the federal government. In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded $1 billion to projects across the country to become resilient to natural disasters. Louisiana was given $48 million dollars for the resettlement of the Isle de Jean Charles community, marking the first time that federal tax dollars are being allocated for community relocation in response to climate change.

"We want to make sure that not only do we get the folks in Isle de Jean Charles moved up into a safe place and a community that can preserve their culture, but we want to have a model that people can replicate in other places," says Pat Forbes, Director of Louisiana's office of Community Development which is overseeing the resettlement.

It's a model that communities across the United States may need soon, says Alex Kolker, a coastal geologist at Tulane University. "The rate that we see in Louisiana in terms of overall sea level rise are the kinds of rates that we might experience in the rest of the country in the middle part of the century as global warming accelerates."

On Isle de Jean Charles, lifelong residents like Chris Brunet are slowly coming to accept that the resettlement plan is necessary as the island becomes uninhabitable.

"I still find myself clinging on to this right here," he says. "It's just that I know that what I'm up against is greater than me and I just can't stop it."

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