Last Friday afternoon, I was watching the ending of HBO’s new film with Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman Hemingway & Gellhorn and after the ending credits, this puzzling, disturbing and thought provoking documentary begun. The sound of foreign voices is what caught my attention again as I tuned out once the ending credits started. Sun Come Up is an Academy Award nominated film that shows the human face of climate change.

To see fellow dark skinned people of the world speaking in foreign tongue always intrigued me and these visuals hypnotized me for the remainder of the short. When climate change threatens their survival, the islanders face a painful decision. They must leave their ancestral land in search of a new place to call home. Sun Come Up follows a group of young islanders as they search for land in Bougainville, 50 miles across the open ocean.

The Carteret Islands, which are off the coast of Papua New Guinea, are facing a situation that we all should pay attention to as the world warms and we begin feeling the devastating effects of climate change. Although their own carbon footprint is virtually nonexistent, the islanders bear the heartbreaking distinction of being some of the world’s first environmental refugees, facing imminent displacement as the sea encroaches upon their home.

As the tides have risen around their atoll of six islands and storm surges have increased, their wells have been ruined by saltwater, their gardens have been destroyed, and their land has eroded. The islanders are working to evacuate their homeland and relocate to Bougainville.

The Carteret islanders are not alone. The United Nations has estimated that climate change will displace up to 250 million people by 2050. Other Pacific islands are also facing extinction and preparing for evacuations. Low-lying, heavily populated areas including Bangladesh are likely to be encroached upon by rising seas, and land-locked areas like Sudan face droughts triggered by climate change.