This article is reproduced with the permission of New Scientist for exclusive use by Nova users.

Islanders 'can't go home'
20 July 2002
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Fred Pearce

For decades they lived in exile, kicked out of their tropical homeland by the British government to make way for a US military base. Then 20 months ago, islanders from the remote Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean heard the news they'd been waiting for. The High Court in London declared they could return home.

But the American military, which has a base on Diego Garcia - the largest, most habitable island where the majority of Chagosians once lived - refuse point-blank to let them visit. Now their prospects of returning have diminished further.

The other coral islands in the group may soon be uninhabitable, warn scientists in a report commissioned by the British government. A feasibility study for the resettlement of the Chagos Archipelago, which looked at islands on the Peros Banhos and Salomon atolls, says that while it may be feasible to resettle the islands in the short-term, "the costs of maintaining long-term inhabitation are likely to be prohibitive".

The study was quietly released by the Foreign Office last week. It found that rising sea levels are eroding the narrow atoll islands, which rise little more than a metre above the ocean, and parts of the islands are flooded several times a year. Fish stocks have declined after high sea temperatures during an El Niño in 1998 killed most of the coral reefs. Rats introduced from Europe have polluted the drinking water, and the market for coconut oil, once the islanders' sole source of cash, has collapsed.

Richard Gifford, the London solicitor who represents the Chagosians, many of whom are living in shanty towns in Mauritius, says the report is unreasonably pessimistic. He also thinks it was designed to discourage resettlement.

But independent scientists who know the archipelago agree with the report's bleak outlook. Charles Sheppard of the University of Warwick says flooding on Peros Banhos has already started to overwhelm the land and turn fresh water saline. These islands "will not be able to support much terrestrial life by 2020 or 2040."

"It is a world lost forever," agrees David Stoddart, a reef scientist from the University of California, Berkeley. "My fear is that, after the misery of the past thirty years, islanders returning with such high hopes will instead find disillusion, grief and ultimately anger and despair."

From issue 2352 of New Scientist magazine, 20 July 2002, page 12

For the latest from New Scientiist visit www.newscientist.com