The old coastal road in this fishing village at the eastern edge of Grenada sits under a couple of feet of murky saltwater, which regularly surges past a hastily-erected breakwater of truck tires and bundles of driftwood.

For Desmond Augustin and the other fishermen living along the shorelines of the southern Caribbean island, there's nothing theoretical about the threat of rising sea levels. "The sea will take this whole place down," Augustin said near his village of tin-roofed shacks built on stilts. "There's not a lot we can do about it."

The people along this vulnerable stretch of eastern Grenada have been watching the sea eat away at their shoreline in recent decades, a result of ferocious storm surges made worse by climate change.

If climate change impact predictions come true, scientists and a growing number of government officials worry that this stressed swath of Grenada could preview what's to come for many other areas in the Caribbean, where 70 percent of people live in coastal settlements.

In fact, a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the devastation wreaked on Grenada by 2004's Hurricane Ivan "is a powerful illustration of the reality of small-island vulnerability." The hurricane killed 28 people and caused damage twice the nation's gross domestic product, according to the climate scientists' report.

Rising sea levels and surges from more intense storms are expected to dramatically transform shorelines in the coming decades, bringing enormous economic and social costs, experts say. The tourism-dependent Caribbean is thought to be one of the globe's most vulnerable regions.

Scientists and computer models estimate that global sea levels could rise by at least 1 meter by 2100. In the 15 nations that make up the Caribbean Community bloc, that could mean the displacement of 110,000 people and the loss of some 150 multimillion-U.S. dollar tourist resorts.

In eastern Grenada, people say greater tidal fluctuations have produced unusually high tides that send seawater rushing up rivers. Farmers complain that crops are getting damaged by the intrusion of the salty water.

Adrian George is one of the coastal residents preparing to move into an inland apartment complex built by the Chinese government following the devastation left by Hurricane Ivan. "I'm now ready to move up to the hills," George said. "Here, the waves will just keep getting closer and closer until we get swept away."