I am writing to seek your assistance for a book I am researching, tentatively entitled THE CANARY NARRATIVES: How Twenty Million Lost Their Homelands. I am in search of remote communities, indigenous and non-indigenous, that have been forced to abandon longstanding, traditional homelands as a consequence of climate change. I am hoping to describe in detail the experience of about a dozen communities existing in as many different ecosystems – montane, island, arctic, riverine, desert, forest, savannah, coastal etc.— that have been so devastated by storm, drought, flood, heat, wildfire, disease or other consequences of global warming, that the place that once supported them became unlivable and people were either forced off their land by fate or opted to relocate.

Two examples I am already researching are Shishmaref, a storm battered coastal community in northeast Alaska, whose residents recently voted to relocate, and Lateu, a village on Tegua Island in Vanuatu I visited two years ago that has since been forced to move to higher ground by rising ocean levels. I have others in mind but need more to choose from.

If you know of even one community that has shared this experience, could you tell me as much as you can about it and perhaps provide the names and coordinates of others familiar with the community, particularly people with direct and immediately experience with the decision making process that lead to evacuation. I am particularly interested in finding tropical, montane, alpine, desert and riverine communities.

Thank you,

Mark Dowie
(dowie@earthlink.net)