"Franck Detcheverry, Miquelon's 41-year-old mayor, trudges up a grassy hill. The view isn't too bad, huh? he jokes. The ocean sparkles 40 metres below the empty mound. The sound of a man playing the bagpipes, as if serenading the sea, floats up from the shoreline. This hill will be the location of his new home and those of all his fellow villagers."
"It sits only 2 metres above sea level on the archipelago of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Situated off the Canadian coast to the south of Newfoundland, it is an overseas collectivity of France, and the country's last foothold in North America. Franck Detcheverry at the site where the new village will be built. We all know each other. That's why it's hard to carry out a project like this,' the mayor says."
"In 2014, Francois Hollande became the first French head of state to set foot on Miquelon and he delivered a huge blow to its 600 or so population: Miquelon could soon disappear because of the rise in sea level, he said, which is estimated to reach one metre by the end of the century. As a result, he put the village under a coastal risk-prevention plan that banned all new construction."
Miquelon is a small, close-knit village of roughly 600 people on Saint-Pierre and Miquelon that sits only two metres above sea level. Rising seas threaten the settlement, with projections of about one metre of rise by century's end. In 2014 the village was placed under a coastal risk-prevention plan that banned new construction. The mayor and community are planning to move homes uphill, selecting a grassy hill site for a new village. Local leaders negotiated a limited timeframe to build and intend to relocate residents gradually while managing strong communal ties.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]