Feature Climate

How an Indigenous community in Panama is escaping rising seas

The Indigenous Guna people of Gardi Sugdub have plans to move to Panama's mainland this year

An overhead photo of the many different and brightly colored homes all clustered together on a small island while surround by a green sea.

Many of the homes on the island of Gardi Sugdub, in Panama’s Guna Yala province, sit right at the edge of the sea.

Michael Adams

By Melba Newsome

In pictures from high above, the island of Gardi Sugdub resembles a container shipyard — small, brightly colored dwellings are jammed together cheek to jowl. At ground level, the island, one of more than 350 in the San Blas archipelago off the northern coast of Panama, is hot, flat and crowded.