it's an informed opinion is ethiopia on the verge of going down many cars or the region under a deep. sea a critical debate after you use a proxy because you have the person the interest of the libyan people in depth analysis of the day's close. inside story on al-jazeera. hello and welcome again to rewind on there's a problem back in 2006 when we 1st launched al-jazeera english our goal was to find stories that other channel simply weren't covering here on rewind we revisit some

of the best of them to find out how the story has moved on in the years since today we rewind into 2009 to the wetlands of the mississippi delta on the gulf of mexico in 2005 the u.s. state of louisiana was devastated by hurricane katrina a category 5 storm which breached levees and flood the city of new orleans and in july 2019 tropical storm barry again forced thousands to evacuate as heavy rainfall brought widespread flooding. but hearkens aren't the only problem louisiana's facing has been using the land to the gulf of mexico at an alarming rate caused in part or the exploration a made by rising sea levels from climate change all of which has threaten the unique and ancient way of life on the by use as those communities now face the prospect of having to read a cape to higher ground as their land and hones

a loss to the rising waters from 2009 he is losing louisiana. what was once a thriving community. only water with lettering above downtown louisville right on the southern tip of louisiana it lies submerged 30 feet below us and what happened here could be what lies in store for the whole of this region as line continues to be claimed by the sea. this is by to fruition part of the delta system of the mighty mississippi one of the great rivers of the world and an american icon. for the fight along highway one towards the gulf of mexico and you'll find what's left of leavell above water level. here to the remnants of the french speaking cajun communities the 1st arrived here in the 18th century evicted by the british from canada. has cajuns take on these fos what it's finding freedom and

independence in this polish bunch hugely top terrain the marshes became and remain home to their descendants today. in one line 70 information online 5 generations in the course of a recent windle curio is the general manager of the south of the food levee district the 1st generation and learn english for french his family's journey through the generations reflects the cajun experience in southern louisiana a fragile existence in a delicate environment these waters are the lifeblood we're here because of the water we're here because the water it feeds us about it is also the nemesis the generations of people in louisiana have been retreating and we're going to keep on retraining until we have to the point of stability. the problem today is that nobody really knows where that vanishing point lies. it's

only with the birds i feel they get a real sense of the scale of the loss. aeration . glad. you got a pretty. at one time these waters were completely planted in green and natural defense against school insurgents through the is the channels with the commercial navigation and oil pipelines with that more and more salt water began flowing into the wetlands poisoning the entire ecosystem of the natural marshlands. results. well for decades the land has been sinking recently the rate has fluctuated between 30 to 50 square kilometers a year today that totals almost 7000 square kilometers an area larger than some us states has disappeared. and now experts are predicting that as global warming

brings stronger and more violent hearkens and rising sea levels the rate of land loss will only accelerate in the past the mississippi used to deposit millions of tons of sediment into the boats but. that no longer levees built to protect against cyclical flooding instead channel all the sediment out to sea stopping the muslims the. way this place. of the mississippi river the water the settlements. and no we don't we didn't allow that flooding anymore so yeah this expanse of delta that basically it's north was cut off much like a heart attack when it went out vessel gets clogged and you can't get a new entrance so different parts of the heart muscle. windell takes us to a small title gauge on the eastern end of highway one the system measures the speed at which the waters of the gulf of mexico consume the surrounding land. the monthly

increase is a microscopic narrow than a single strand of hair but climate scientists believe they indicate something died the more we wait the more places it'll be too late the fact that a lot is 10 years is going to be too late for a lot of areas there's not only movement groups or it's rules of the past and it could be that right here one of the 1st major stories in the age of global warming is being written. the obituary for southeast louisiana once flourishing can cypress trees like these quickly die as salt water intrudes. those trees drowned seen as nature's tombstones. in louisville and in other towns along the by even the dead on spanned a poignant reminder of the community that has disappeared and. for those who remain

the rapid change and sense of loss runs deep down that she's all right you have the farmland that raise judgment day that russian blood donation. big plantation all those are gone but. captain bobby brown has been running the legal dock for 4 decades in front of him now is only water the people who lived here distant memories but trapped and they wanted to live in. the sram and it called auster. that this mission push water. now salt water. it's a shame. it's a shame to lose. what shocked many people that was born and raised here they're headed you know as a fresh water turns to salt water ecological changes swiftly followed. and with that a profound impact on the lives and livelihoods of the cajun especially for those in

the shrimping of. us who are over the food base of every species between here and the gulf it all starts in the marshes so once we lose our marshes the food they see roads and everything else just this goes. to louisiana shrimp need the fresh water marshes to mature before heading out into the gulf now they're running out of room as a consequence the fishing season is increasingly shortened. coupled with an influx of cheap foreign bred shrimp saturates in the u.s. market local fishermen have no way. turn that's one thing about the numbers now they their resilience bunch and they work hard and they just have to work harder for less money but like i say it's just been tougher and tougher the economics you know are getting worse but you know it seems like every year for these guys heads it's a struggle. add to that more than $300000000.00 in damage schools to the local industry

by the last 2 hurricanes alone and these fishing be the towns of years gone by have all but gone down. for them. at 2 pm every day of what they call the cajun dollar alongside highway one a group of old friends gather. there are some right by god yeah they still speak the pats were offering their ancestors. but goal of the day for the last is of the bayou instead they collect cans for few extra dollars so if it wasn't changed a lot in his life to. them all of them on the tile way off. well i broke it. going to pot. c'mon how i'm near you know. she's not going to get

a small thing to say that it's sad. it's really sad to see still the land been well you know or gone away society and i don't know how much more still people. these old timers a pretty much all that's left of the cage an existence on fire. it all in and the progress i just call it away i'll have. it. at. 80. this is an island road the only connection between the mainland and killed is josh on. the island isn't funny the small ridge of land now below sea level it's surrounded by levees that have failed to protect the area as hearkens gray stronger and the protective marshes disappear. i can tell you about all of them have

came from here betsy or drew coming to and katrina rita. i think is camille ma has driven about 300 feet away and for andrew. when in the middle of the room right now. here the biloxi chichi mucha and native american tribes have lived for centuries but the chief is reluctantly conceding that the moment has come to make a change we're now in the last 7 years the last 70 percent of our people there so i mean so we don't know how much of all of this is going to be here there is one levy plan to salvage some of the communities along the southern coast but it may come at the expense of others like chief not queens people we want to move as a community because of our heritage the history we have here on niland and to try to keep the culture get also. he has also a government for aid to relocate but some on the island are resisting his plan i

don't want to. cast me something. and it's a life or death. but the majority say they are ready to face facts after years of rebuilding and recovering from the lot of nature you can't plan anything here you can't grow any animals here the parents have to bring their children to school if it was groceries in the waters on the road without either do without or tried to watch the water go down and then and then come back what's left is mostly memories among the ruins and all of this was beautiful they had trees and they had the land out there where you could walk and it's going to feel good again to be safe. it took the mississippi river 7000 years to build

the coast of louisiana it took less than a century to wash away a 3rd of it to understand how we don't at this point have to go back 80 years to the time of huey p. long he was a visionary state governor he helped create much of what we see today the streets the levees built to protect the city the bridges and the canals all help the state of louisiana it hold it out of poverty but there was a floor in the plan without the sediment brought down by the mississippi river the line started to subside. in the night he sees long he had consolidated enormous political power again unprecedented public. aimed at lifting residents out of poverty and bringing more industry to the state. that when you roads bridges there were dogs for ships and with all of this along came the only industry. rigs began sprouting up along the bayous and canals with

dredged across the fields to facilitate drilling volume supply but. we unleashed forces that we did not quite understand and it's. very bad outcomes. roy is a professor at louisiana state university if you know he started using g.p.s. technology to study how the surface shifts because research revealed that data that everybody had been relying on for decades had been exaggerated or here we can actually see today 12 satellites the reality is that the land is actually lower than records show which means the threat is far greater than people think initially there was a number of people. denied it they didn't want to hear it in fact they actively worked against even the publication of this work but over time. the reality you

see here because now people are beginning to see this effect wherever they go. because not only the wetlands that are in trouble were on the east side of new orleans in a place called lake forest it is a quiet enough community but it's what lies beneath that's a problem. in this neighborhood just on the edge of new orleans you can see subsidence in action foundations opened up by the sinking ground and you can't park a car you know garridge because the driveways and more than a foot below the entrance. the problem is nobody can agree on a solution coastal restoration efforts have been underway for 2 decades but for every square kilometer of land that the government has by the saved or created 5 square kilometers have been lost to the gulf these internal bombs become big big

and big and they carry sampai force as a marine biologist and director of the terry bone national estrie program we couldn't build a land where there was a land before but we can build land where. there was land before we can build a ridge where there was land before. because you have the the foundation to support that land sampai and others reject the idea that more levees will save the the land all towns instead he and other support a 2 pronged plan to pump in massive amounts of new settlement and allow the mississippi river to restore the rest of the river is the key it's the only way to get the the most efficient way of holding on to what's still left and it will take a lot of money. there's no question that we cannot afford this alone. there's no question that you know that this is not

a louisiana problem alone this is a national problem and will require a national commitment without being neglected we've been forgotten we're basically being ignored by the federal government. meanwhile virtually all the practices that exacerbated land loss were allowed to continue and in some cases even encouraged. i don't want to be critical of my federal government but they really did do a whole bunch here constraints it is a harbor policeman it took us to a place where many believe the only hope to save southern louisiana lines. wolf you show as a cluster of sport fishing camps in a gated community surrounded by huge dogs it is a city of ships in the marshes with supply vessels for the $500.00 or more oil rigs out in the gulf of mexico. a 3rd of america's oil and natural gas comes through here accounting for haul off of the nation's refinery output but despite all of

this industrial capacity just a small slice makes it into the coffers of the state. out of the $7000000000.00 in revenue louisiana receives less than one percent. and people just don't understand the importance and the benefits that south louisiana provides for as a country but the price of his few by the seafood is ability to get his grain to market is all the pain that points south louisiana functioning properly and that understanding of that. there is a congressional plan to reroute funds to states like louisiana but not until 2017 many observers say that will simply be too late. when i was a little boy my grandfather used to say this was the bank. if you needed money you went to the bank caught it sold it and got your money but it's not like

that any more. government regulation salt water intrusion habitat destruction you know these guys here they're all dying they're getting old and there's no one morning to take their money my generation or the next generation may very well be the last of this. this is place a tipping point in the balance between man and his into. and is this river delta fated to be a clarion call for help humans and nature must strike a better balance so that both can survive. they rob the bank they're all the bank that's a good way of putting it yeah they've run the bank. losing louisiana from 2009 but some dire warnings about what the next decade would bring so 10 years on we often clock now al-jazeera as environment correspondent to return

to louisiana to find out of the anticipated death of the delta became reality or whether to quote mark twain those reports turned out to be grossly exaggerated. i'm on my way back to by the force in southern louisiana to catch up with window curio his job is to maintain the levee that surrounds it protects this area from the elements. very stay when the great ladder you have you know it saves a bit well and i reckon. that's good. when we were last here how much have we lost since then or is. as in the last 10 years we were ruling about how we use the road back in the 70s we were written about 70 square miles

a year down to maybe 15 square miles ok it's still substantial but it's less so it was 70 years now 15 when i was a kid i mean you would see open water from the room it was just solid more used to fill the canal on the side road than the used to build the road but it was all in march you look at it right now from one i was a kid out 151 where you would have 85 percent was land and more now 90 percent is open water. to live in relative security in this part of the world you need a huge amount of student debt and i'm working on a harken levy which all the way around in circles 3 communities 26000 people right here is the town of gold medal gold medal several feet below sea level and the sea . is just here on this side of the levee that is the front edge of the gulf of

mexico and without this hurricane levy gold medal the other communities would not exist. but some parts of be left to the elements this is the once thriving community of leaving which unlike golden meadow has no levee to protect it from rising sea levels or even minor storms the course with a levels to rise. it's a lot of these kids. you know we had it was a lot more like. a match in this land all this land being fortified he hadas today that's what people. yeah there was as you say there was a cemetery right that was in the right and took a boat out to it and you could clearly see the tombstone stick you know it was or

not it's just it's just flat was right. so the community here in louisville 10 years ago it was round about what's a 30 yeah and i think it just it's been a continuous you know from the 1915 or it's been losing population and then 10 years ago it might have that you know but now we're down to 6 feet. you see this area though that we look at gold into gold medal would look just like this just like this if you didn't have a living. i meant for this man insult his family a fish these waters for generations but you know faces the very real prospect of losing everything here saying here yes the for this is how it right yes let me show you around so you while we have. this is our boat.

one of the last remaining leavell residents the death of the mississippi delta is very much a reality. so tell me what it's like when. and when you hear a storm is brewing and you just you just start praying you have to you have to packing go you know they make you leave and then you don't know if you coming back to any other areas do things in their preserving their profit land and here is it's not there's no future in them or future for president. if it hurts it hurts to know that. you have to move and i know we'll have to move on though we'll have to leave here. they won't have nothing water you'll have water.

if she's right and in 10 more years time there will be no record and they leave this whole area will be underwater and in the gulf of mexico. well that's it from us join us again next week and do check out the rewind page at al-jazeera dot com for more films from the series but for now thank you for joining us and we'll see you again so. you can spot.

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