Living face-to-face with climate change
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2022
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What’s it like to live in a country on the sharp end of climate change? Today Tamasin Ford takes you to Sâo Tomé and Príncipe, the twin island nation in the gulf of Guinea. With the smallest economy in Africa, it has few means to fight what the UN calls the biggest threat modern humans have ever faced. We hear from coastal communities whose homes have been washed away because of rising sea levels.
President Carlos Vila Nova, who spoke at the United Nation’s climate conference in Glasgow last year, lays out the challenges small island nations face. While Luisa Madruga from the charity, Flora and Fauna International, explains how a new initiative could save fish stocks from disappearing altogether.
Presenter: Tamasin Ford Producer: Russell Newlove Photo: Principe, the community of Praia de Burras; Credit: BBC
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I had this secret. I robbed banks in my spare time. |
| 0:06.4 | Lives Less Ordinary from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:09.6 | This is not a good thing to do because police are after you. |
| 0:14.9 | Find out more at the end of this podcast. |
| 0:19.5 | The Sounds of the Ocean. |
| 0:21.6 | I'm Tamerson Ford and welcome to a special edition of Business Daily from the tropical archipelago of Saoame and Principi in the Gulf of Guinea. |
| 0:32.6 | I'm here to find out how and why small island nations are so vulnerable to climate change. |
| 0:40.9 | My first stop is Principae, Sautamei's sister island, |
| 0:45.0 | with a population of just 7,000 people. |
| 0:50.3 | This is the fishing community of Priabura in the north of the island. There's a line of palm |
| 0:56.5 | trees along one side with houses and fishing boats behind and I've got the sea on my left-hand |
| 1:04.0 | side. I'm being followed by a group of very chassey young kids. But it's here where people have really felt the effects of rising sea levels. |
| 1:14.7 | There used to be an entire strip of houses in front of these palm trees, |
| 1:19.1 | and every single one of them has already been washed away into the sea. |
| 1:21.8 | And it's the next strip of houses that are now in danger of slipping away to. |
| 1:31.1 | Thirty-sixth century. houses that are now in danger of slipping away too. 36-year-old Dionysio Netto-Kalib is busy packing fish into Hessian sacks. |
| 1:38.8 | They've all been dried and smoked and they're packing them up and they'll ship them to Saltono. |
| 1:45.7 | The fisherman moved to this community when he was 13. |
| 1:54.1 | He tells me when he arrived, this all used to be forest. |
| 1:59.5 | It was the waves, he says, that washed the trees away. |
| 2:09.3 | Dionysio's neighbour, 26-year-old fish trader, Zaldiniaz Suarez, |
| 2:14.1 | introduces me to her two small sons and their friends. |
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