The BBC’s recent article “Climate change: The Panama community that fled its drowning island,” claims that rising sea levels are swallowing the island of Cartí Sugdupu in Panama due to climate change. This is false. [emphasis, links added]
The reality is that the island’s inhabitants are not being forced to relocate because of rising oceans, but due to overcrowding, poor infrastructure, and a lack of resources—issues that have nothing to do with climate change.
Furthermore, real-world examples and peer-reviewed research contradict the idea that small islands are disappearing due to rising seas. Instead, many islands are growing, adapting, and naturally shifting over time.
The BBC’s report is misleading at best, and deliberately deceptive at worst.
Cartí Sugdupu is one of Panama’s San Blas Islands, home to the indigenous Guna people.
The BBC’s article, painting a picture of climate-induced displacement, completely ignores the fact that the island is severely overcrowded, with more than 1,000 people packed into a tiny space of just 0.028 square miles.
That’s a population density higher than New York City!
The residents are primarily moving not from rising sea levels, but from poor living conditions, lack of fresh water, and a shortage of space—issues that have been pressing for decades.
Instead of addressing these fundamental concerns, the BBC presents the relocation as a direct result of climate change, despite the absence of evidence that rising seas are responsible.
The sea level around Panama has been rising at an average of about 1 to 3 mm per year, a rate consistent with natural post-Little Ice Age trends, a rate that has not increased during the recent period of climate change.
As such, there is no indication of an impending climate catastrophe as described in Climate at a Glance. At this pace, it would take centuries before Cartí Sugdupu would face submersion.
Some new islands are even emerging. For example in the article San Blas Reborn: New Islands Emerge Amidst Climate Change Hysteria it has been reported:
A new island is gradually taking shape off the coast of Maoqui in the Dutch Cays. What started as a mere speck of land, approximately 5 meters by 8 meters, has grown over the past decade to a remarkable 40 meters by 80 meters.
Off the coast of Maoqui in the Dutch Cays, a new island is gradually taking shape. What started as a mere speck of land, approximately 5 meters by 8 meters, has grown over the past decade to a remarkable 40 meters by 80 meters.
A 2018 study published in Nature Communications examined 101 Pacific and Indian Ocean islands and found that 88 percent were either stable or increasing in size (Kench, Ford, and Owen, 2018).
The processes that shape islands—sediment accumulation, reef growth, and dynamic land movement—mean that atolls and low-lying islands are not passive victims of sea level rise.
Tuvalu is a perfect example. Despite years of claims that the country would disappear, its total land area has even grown by 2.9 percent over four decades.
Similar observations have been made for islands in Kiribati, the Maldives, and the Marshall Islands.
If these islands are growing or maintaining their size despite sea level rise, why would Cartí Sugdupu be uniquely doomed? The BBC refuses to acknowledge this inconvenient reality.
The real reason for the relocation of Cartí Sugdupu’s residents has nothing to do with climate change. Instead, it comes down to basic infrastructure challenges:
- Overpopulation – As seen in the head photograph, the island is overcrowded, with nowhere to expand. Unlike coral atolls that naturally grow, Cartí Sugdupu is an isolated, heavily inhabited island with no room for additional housing or development.
- Lack of Freshwater and Sanitation – Many small islands struggle with freshwater availability. The BBC ignores this and instead attributes all hardships to climate change.
- Economic and Government Decisions – Panama’s government is relocating the residents as part of a planned move, not an emergency evacuation due to rising waters.
The BBC’s reporting is a prime example of climate alarmism dressed up as journalism, with the organization pushing a narrative while ignoring crucial facts.
Rather than investigating the real reasons behind Cartí Sugdupu’s relocation—overpopulation, lack of infrastructure, and government decisions—the BBC misleadingly claims climate change is forcing its residents to relocate.
It is the government that has made that decision, and not because the seas are rising at a historically unusual rate.
The BBC ignores peer-reviewed research disproving its claim that islands are disappearing, fails to mention historical sea level trends, and omits crucial local factors that explain the island’s challenges.
This isn’t objective reporting—it is activism disguised as news. The BBC’s audience deserves better, it deserves the truth.
Read more at Climate Realism
In promoting its activism the BBC ignored a scientific fact that is known to most children. Water seeks its own level. In calm conditions with no current we can be sure that the water level on one side of a pond is the same as the other. It is the same with the oceans. If the island of Cartí Sugdupu was being drowned by raising sea levels, that would be true of every low island in the world.
All part of the UN/CFR/Global Government their Just using this Global Warming/Climate Change Scam
to convince the rest of us into a One World Government under the Useless Nations and the Real Goals or the UN
The British government is the largest donor to the BBC. The second largest donor has been the USAID. As such, the US government has been funding “activism disguised as news.” The BBC is only one of many, many progressive organizations and causes funded the USAID. President Trump’s shutting this agency down is the right thing to do.
“…just 0.028 square miles.”
I make that roughly 16 acres. Three regular ‘city blocks’, each 330 ft x 660 feet. I sneeze, my neighbor wipes his nose.
You look at the photo and the homes are all single floor so those 1000 residents are practically on top of each other.
BBC is just like the rest of the leftists propaganda they call News like our own M.S. Media Bottom Feeders