Rising Tides, Falling Shores: A lament on Disappearing Lands
Inhabitants from the small Mexican village of El Bosque relocated ten kilometers inland last November, after the sea swallowed more than sixty houses since 2019, with winter storms eating more than one-third of a mile inland since 2005.
Some of the 5,800 people who lived in the Sierra Leonean town of Plantain Island have been moving to other places for several decades, having lost a lot of their homes to the Atlantic Ocean, with the sea encroaching steadily into places where people lived.
A sizable number of the 1,700 inhabitants of Carteret Island in Papua New Guinea had been retreating inland for ages, forced to abandon a land they first occupied 200 years ago, with the highest point at the place 1.5 meters, with the Pacific Ocean eating into the land.
The situation with El Bosque, Plantain Island, and Carteret Island is familiar, because the challenge faces many such places today - Marshall Islands, Isle de Jean Charles, Kiribati, the Maldives, Okun Alfa in Lagos, Nigeria, Nyangai in Sierra Leone, and many places too numerous to mention.
The sea level at the Gulf of Mexico sea has been rising twice the global average since 2010, bringing about flooding, with just a dozen people living in El Bosque at the time of the relocation last year, from more than 700 people in 2021.
The Atlantic Ocean near Sierra Leone has encroached inland by 300 meters in some places over the last four decades, causing many inhabitants of Plantain Island to relocate completely, or move slightly inwards, plagued by loss of income and worsening conditions.
The Pacific Ocean at Papua New Guinea shows a sea level rise of around seven millimeters per year, exceeding the global average of 3.2 millimeters, with parts of the country experiencing tides in 2021 that displaced over 53,000 people, damaged 10 coastal villages, the garden and houses of 3,400 people in four communities submerged.
In all of the instances, the blame lay behind climate change-induced sea level rise that brought ocean encroachment, leading to the displacement of thousands of people, or relocation to other places, with the victims having to leave their ancestral homes.
The Gulf of Mexico could see 12 inches of additional sea level increase over the next 25 years, with coastal flooding occurring more than 10 times on average by 2050 than 2022 in many locations, meaning the displacement or relocation of a considerable number of people.
The Atlantic Ocean is predicted to show increases in sea level in the next 25 years, with flooding and severity of coastal erosion putting at least two million people in Sierra Leone at risk.
The Pacific Ocean is predicted to show a sea level rise of 20 centimeters above 2020 levels by 2050 and 56 centimeters by 2100, especially if current policies and climate action push the world on a path of 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming, and this could cause chaos to people in such places like Papua New Guinea.
In other words, sea level rise would continue in the near future, with massive flooding and severity of coastal erosion leading to a sizable number of people to relocate to safe areas.
The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions would help mitigate the effects of sea level rise, as well as support for coastal communities through relocation and resilience, plus protection and restoration of natural coastal ecosystems like mangrove, salt marshes, and dunes, which can act as buffers against sea incursion and erosion of coastal landmarks.
What to Eat
Vegan food from Sierra Leone, Credit, Best of Vegan