The 1,500 residents of Carteret Island...are fast becoming the world's first climate change refugees. Sea levels around the atoll have risen 10 centimeters in the past 20 years, inundating plantations, and the situation is deteriorating...[Islanders] urgently need assistance to be relocated to higher ground...Many of the island's inhabitants have run out of food [as] salt water seeps through the land making it impossible for food to grow...[C]hildren and women..are [the most] vulnerable...[and the Autonomous Bougainville Government] is struggling to provide assistance..."Carteret islanders are victims of climate change and rising sea levels," Rakova said, "and industrialized nations have to support my people in their transition from the atolls to mainland Bougainville.