A small community living in the Pacific island chain of Vanuatu has become one of, if not the first, to be formally moved out of harm‘s way as a result of climate change.

“The sea has its own ways. We can‘t control it,“ says Chief Reuben Selwyn as he stands on a thin wall of coral which is all that now separates his little village from the invading sea.

The destiny of Tegua island, home to 64 people in the remote Torres group of islands in far north Vanuatu, has always rested on the seas of the South Pacific.

The sea brought its first settlers at least 3000 years ago on bamboo rafts, its raiding enemies from nearby islands, the first beche-de-mer traders from Europe, “blackbirders“ and Anglican missionaries.

It brings bright rainbow-coloured reef fish and leatherback turtles, who build nests along a windswept coast, as well as colonies of football-sized coconut crabs, prized by the restaurants of the Vanuatuan capital of Port Vila.

But for some years, the sea has been literally eating away this pristine coral island.

Chief Reuben, paramount head of the island and father of six boys and six girls, claims that at least once a year a combination of king tides and a surging sea whipped up by strong winds floods his village of Loteu. He remembers as a young boy he could walk 30 metres from his house and fish from a rocky beach platform. Now the platform is submerged and he has been forced to abandon his childhood home.

“I‘d say the sea has come up 10 or 20 metres [horizontally] since I was a boy,“ he says. “I can‘t say if it‘s because of humans or because nature has its own power. But for us here we have no choice; early next year we will move into a new village further inland,“ he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

A world away in Montreal, Canada, scientists have been attending a major conference on climate change and the human cost of rising sea levels.

The scientific panel advising the UN Environment Program believes seas could rise by up to a metre by 2100 because of melting polar icecaps and warmer temperatures linked to burning fossil fuels and the industrial emission of greenhouse gasses.

“The peoples of the Arctic and the small islands of this world face many of the same threats,“ says Klaus Toepfer, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

“The melting and receding of sea ice and the rising of sea levels, storm surges and the like are the first manifestations of big changes under way which eventually will touch everyone on the planet.“

A Pacific island delegate at the 189-nation conference, Taito Nakalevu, says king tides are flooding islands across his region.

Pacific islanders living on low-lying coral atolls are among those seriously at risk. Two uninhabited Kiribati islands disappeared in 1999. Tuvalu has approached Australia and New Zealand to resettle its entire population when its islands are expected to go underwater within the next 30 years.

Meanwhile, 2000 people living on the Carteret islands in Papua New Guinea are preparing to move to nearby Bougainville island, a four-hour boat ride to the south-west.

One Carteret islander told Radio Australia recently that they were only waiting on finance from the government to help them move. Their health has been steadily deteriorating because they are losing access to fresh water, and gardens are being destroyed by advancing salt water. On Tegua, Chief Reuben claims the same problems have beset his community.