By Charles Bennett

In my first weeks in Bougainville the weather was very hot, very humid, but dry. Rainwater storage tanks were running low and any rainfall was occasional and light. In the last couple of weeks there has been a major change – rain is now heavy and frequent.

Climate change is a major issue in islands like Bougainville. While it is most likely caused by the burning of fossil fuels in industrialised countries, its impact is being felt most strongly in developing countries like Papua New Guinea. Many people here live a mostly subsistence lifestyle, growing most of their own food in gardens. Others rely on generating income through growing cash crops like cocoa and coconuts. The crops that people grow are adapted to the climate here, and people plant crops according to the seasons. If weather patterns start to change and crops don’t grow, many people have little safety net and will struggle for income and food.

Typically, July is part of the dry season, but this year the wet season has come early and the heavy monsoon rains are having a massive impact. Only small sections of the roads in Bougainville are sealed and the remainder have quickly turned to a series of deep water-filled pot holes. The rain also causes slips and landslides, creating road blocks that the government in Bougainville does not yet have the capacity to clear quickly.

Tropical storm in Sirovai

This has a big impact on the local communities, as the poor roads mean they cannot take their cocoa and copra to the buyers. It is also impacting on our project, causing delays in the distribution of materials and stopping us from travelling to some of our project sites.

There’s not much we can do about these delays, and we’re just hoping that August is drier than July has been.

Another impact of climate change is sea level rise. One of the projects we are working on here is to help the people of the Carteret Islands relocate to Bougainville. Carteret Islanders have been called some of the world’s first climate change refugees. Rising sea levels have meant that more of the land on the island is becoming saline, and crops that are needed for the community to survive, such as taro and banana, are no longer growing. We are working with a local organisation, Tulele Peisa – which means ‘sailing the waves on our own’ – to help the people from these islands move to new land on the coast of Bougainville.

Noticeable sea level rise in the Carteret Islands