Sea rise threatens Muslim residents of small Australian island
Cocos Malay community lived in quiet continuity on Home Island — a place where faith, family and rhythm of sea shape daily life
HOME ISLAND, Australia (MNTV) — For nearly two centuries, the Cocos Malay community has lived in quiet continuity on Home Island — a place where faith, family and the rhythm of the sea shape daily life.
Now, as rising waters inch closer to their homes, that continuity is under threat, forcing residents to confront the possibility that their ancestral homeland may not survive the century, reports SBS News.
Haji Ramnie Mokta stands beside the turquoise lagoon, watching the waters that have shaped life on Home Island in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands for generations. It is a view his ancestors have known for nearly two centuries, and one he struggles to imagine disappearing.
The 83-year-old has spent his entire life on this remote coral atoll, five hours by plane from Western Australia, where he lives with his wife among the island’s Cocos Malay community.
Life here, he says, is “less complicated” — there’s no mobile reception — and that is exactly how he likes it.
Most days, Mokta goes fishing in the lagoon or spends time in his small workshop crafting spears, anchors and knives — each day also shaped around the Muslim call to prayer that echoes regularly through the village.
Four generations before him were part of the community that grew here after English and Scottish merchants brought Malay workers to establish coconut plantations in the 1800s.
Over time, their languages and traditions blended with those of laborers brought from different parts of the world, forming the distinct Cocos Malay language spoken on the islands today.
The result is one of Australia’s oldest continuous Muslim communities — tightly knit, culturally distinct and deeply connected to place.
That history makes it almost impossible for Mokta to imagine Home Island without people.
Yet scientists warn it could become reality within the next 40 years. That’s within the lifetime of Mokta’s 13 grandchildren and 40 great-grandchildren.
Rising seas are slowly encroaching upon the low-lying atoll, raising questions about whether the community can remain here long into the future. “It will be very sad,” Mokta tells SBS News.
“I don’t know how long I have left, but I feel sad for the people who come after me and for Cocos.”
A community shaped by history and rising tides
The Cocos Islands sit around 2,900km north-west of Perth and 1,270km south-west of Jakarta, Indonesia.
English traders settled the islands in the 1820s, bringing Malay workers to harvest coconuts and produce copra (dried coconut flesh).
For more than a century, the Cocos Malay population lived under a feudal system controlled by the Scottish Clunies-Ross family. That system only formally ended in 1979.
Five years later, in 1984, Cocos Islanders voted in a United Nations-supervised act of self-determination, choosing integration with Australia over independence or free association.
Today, the islands remain an external Australian territory.
At the last Census count, there were 448 people living on Home Island, one of only two of the 27 Cocos Islands with permanent settlements.
Changes in the island’s 13-square-kilometre landscape over two centuries of habitation have not gone unnoticed.
Elders have witnessed the loss of 10-15 metres of land from the beachfront by the village in the past decade alone, prompting the construction of three seawalls.
Sixty-four-year-old Abedin Nod, whose home is on the row of houses nearest to the shoreline — about 50m away — says it is easy to see what scientists have long predicted about rising sea levels.
“We saw something changing, the edge of the island, the coral has been growing up,” he tells SBS News.
Rising seas have also lifted the underground water table, so during persistent rain, surface water takes longer to dissipate.
According to a 2021 Coastal Vulnerability Study, there has been a vertical sea level rise of about 4mm per year around Home Island since 1992.
Forecasts from the study predict that if sea levels in the area continue to rise at this rate, they will be 14 to 18cm higher by 2030 and 40 to 44cm higher by 2070.
Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi from the University of Western Australia’s Oceans Institute says, generally, a one-centimetre vertical rise in sea level translates to one metre of horizontal coastline loss, depending on local conditions.
As illustrated by modelling in the draft Coastal Hazard Risk Management and Adaptation Plan (CHRMAP) for Home Island, commissioned by the Australian government, this means the long, narrow island will continue to shrink.
What could the future hold?
The draft CHRMAP, released in August 2024, noted: “Potential interventions other than relocation of vulnerable assets will be cost-prohibitive in the long term.”
A final version of the report has since been submitted to the Australian government for consideration, but it has not yet been released publicly.
The draft warned there may not be enough habitable land on Home Island for the community to remain there without facing significant health and safety risks from “coastal inundation, erosion, and associated flooding”.
It suggested that authorities should “investigate managed retreat of the Home Island community off-island” in the medium term (2028–2068) — meaning the community would be relocated.
“Depending on the results of a medium-term managed retreat, it is likely that a full retreat from the island will be necessary,” the draft noted.
Culture at risk
Home Island imam Haji Adam says without its island homeland, his community would no longer be the same. “If they move to other places, the young generation will be changed, our culture will disappear,” he tells SBS News.
“Within the mainland, people are living far away [from] each other, but in the kampong [village], we are living in the same sort of a community, same language, same culture, and even very close, house to house.”
Adam says elders are deeply connected to the environment, the community and the spirit of the place, and are reluctant to leave. “[The federal government] should look at, very seriously, how to provide the projects to protect the sea level coming to the shore.”
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