Carteret Islands

Dan Box reports from a community in its death throes, as the Carteret islanders pack up their homes and prepare to become the world’s first climate change refugees

I slept in my clothes last night, on the bare wooden floor of one of the houses the first boatload of people to be evacuated from the Carteret Islands are building for their families. It was a jet-black night in the small clearing hacked out amid the jungle, the dark broken only by our two candles and the lights of Fireflies jigging in the trees.

Dan Box is on-site to witness the world's first climate refugees being evacuated due to rising sea levels

'You have camera?' The taxi driver makes a tube out of his forefingers and thumb and holds it to his eye.

In Dan Box's final write-up before he heads for the Carteret Islands, he contemplates his journey and how prepared he really is.

Dan Box teaches a class about climate change and its effects on the Carteret Islands, which are sinking due to rising sea levels, and how children can help stop climate change.

Working up to his departure for the Carteret Islands to report on the world's first officially recognised climate change refugees, Dan Box considers how travel insurance takes on a whole new meaning...

Something is starting to bother me about this trip. It’s not the travelling (though when I picked up my flight tickets yesterday, the travel agent warned me that people in Papua New Guinea still wear bones through their noses. I promised to keep an eye out).