by EL BOSQUE, Mexico (AP) – People moved to El Bosque on the Gulf of Mexico in the 1980s to fish and build a community. Then climate change turned the sea against the town.
Flooding driven by some of the world’s fastest sea-level rise and increasingly brutal winter storms have devastated El Bosque, leaving twisted piles of concrete where houses line the sand . Forced to flee the houses they built, the locals are waiting for help from the government in rents they can barely afford.
The UN climate summit known as COP28 finally agreed this month on a loss and damage fund of millions of dollars to help developing countries combat global warming. It will be too late for the people of El Bosque, but by 2050 millions more Mexicans will be displaced by climate change, according to the Mayors’ Migration Council, a coalition that researches internal migration.
Just two years ago there were over 700 people living in El Bosque; there are hardly a dozen left.
Between those numbers are the remains of a lost community. At one of the few solid buildings left — the old concrete fishing cooperative — giant vault-like refrigerators are now storage units for belongings left behind.
Guadalupe Cobos is one of the few still living in El Bosque. The residents’ relationship with the sea is “like a toxic marriage,” Cobos said as he sat in front of the waves on a recent afternoon.
“I love you when I’m happy, right? And when I’m angry I take away everything I gave you,” she said.
In addition to rapidly rising water levels, winter storms known as “nortes” have eaten more than one-third of a mile (500 meters) inland since 2005, according to Lilia Gama, a coastal vulnerability researcher at Tabasco State University Juárez.
“Before, if a norte came in, it lasted a day or two,” Gama said. “The tide would come in, it would come up a little bit and it would go away.”
Now, fueled by warming air that can hold more moisture, winter storms linger for several days at a time.
Local scientists say a more powerful storm could destroy El Bosque for good. Resettlement, delayed by bureaucracy and lack of funding, is still months away.
As the sun sets over the beach, Cobos, known to his neighbors as Dona Lupe, points out a dozen small orange stars on the horizon — oil rigs that burn gas.
“There’s money here,” she says, “but it’s not for us.”
With El Bosque settled, state oil company Pemex went on an exploration spree in the Gulf – tripling crude oil production and making Mexico a major international exporter. Now Mexico plans to open a new refinery in Tabasco, just 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of El Bosque.
Gulf of Mexico sea levels are already rising three times faster than the global average, according to a study co-authored by researchers from the United Kingdom, New Orleans, Florida and California this March.
The major difference is caused by changing circulation patterns in the Atlantic as the ocean recedes and expands.
Slashes of the so-called Emerald Coast in the state of Veracruz are storm-battered, flooded and falling into the sea, and a quarter of the neighboring state of Tabasco will be submerged by 2050, according to one study.
Around the world, facing similar slow-moving battles with water, coastal communities from Quebec to New Zealand have begun to strike a “managed retreat.”
Little, however, it seems, is being managed under the retreat from El Bosque. When the Xolo family fled their home on November 21, they left in the middle of the night, all ten children under a tarpaulin in the pouring rain.
When The Associated Press visited El Bosque during a storm in late November, public access was only on foot, or by motorcycle. The same day the shelter was closed, with papered over windows and a government sign announcing “8 steps to protect your health in the event of a flood.”
Meanwhile, new houses will not be ready before the fall of 2024, according to Raúl García, head of Tabasco’s urban development department, who himself said that the process is too slow.
While advocates call for specific climate adaptation laws, native-born President Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador has made oil development a key part of his platform. That could change if former Mexico City Mayor and talented scientist Claudia Sheinbaum is elected president next year. Despite being a protégé of Lopéz Obrador, she promises to commit Mexico to sustainability, a commitment that is more urgent than ever.
Eglisa Arias Arias, a grandmother of two, had to flee her home in El Bosque on November 3.
“I would go to sleep listening to the sound of the sea,” she said, “I would tell him that I know I will miss you because it was with that noise that you taught me how to love you.”
When the flood came to Arias’ house, she only asked the sea for enough time to gather her things, and it gave her that.
“And so, when I left there, I said goodbye to the sea. I thank him for the time he was there for me.”
