Panama begins evacuation plan for island residents as it becomes uninhabitable due to climate change

On the island -- the size of five football fields -- the community lived in rudimentary dirt-floor houses crammed together, some jutting out into the sea on stilts (Credit: AFP)

About 300 Panamanian families are gearing up to leave the place where they have lived their entire lives, as rising sea levels as a result of climate change have made their island uninhabitable in the long term.

The population of Gardi Sugdub, a tiny island off the country's Caribbean coast, is the first of 63 such communities expected to relocate through the years as a result of this, according to a new report by The Associated Press.