Cities brace for rising seas

Cities brace for rising seas
Amphibious homes float on the harbor in the IJburg neighborhood in Amsterdam in March 2012. The Netherlands, a third of which lies below sea level, has been managing water since the Middle Ages. Margriet Faber/The Associated Press


Posted: Sunday, June 16, 2013 10:00 pm | Updated: 12:02 am, Mon Jun 17, 2013.
Cities brace for rising seas Associated Press
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series on adapting to climate change. The first story appeared in Sunday’s edition.
BONN, Germany — From Bangkok to Miami, cities and coastal areas across the globe are already building or planning defenses to protect millions of people and key infrastructure from more powerful storm surges and other effects of global warming.
Some are planning cities that will simply adapt to more water.

But climate-proofing a city or coastline is expensive, as shown by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $20 billion plan to build floodwalls, levees and other defenses against rising seas.

The most vulnerable places are those with the fewest resources to build such defenses, secure their water supplies or move people to higher ground. How to pay for such measures is a burning issue in U.N. climate talks, which just wrapped up a session in the German city of Bonn.

A sampling of cities around the world and what they are doing to prepare for the climatic forces that scientists say are being unleashed by global warming:

Rotterdam, Netherlands: In a country where two-thirds of the population lives below sea level, the battle against the sea has been a matter of life and death for centuries.

The Dutch government devotes roughly 1 percent of its annual budget to its intricate system of dikes, dunes and sea walls. Improvements to cope just with the effects of climate change have been carried out since 2003 — though planning began well before that.

The focus in the 20th century was on a spectacular series of sea defenses, including massive steel and concrete barriers that can be quickly moved to protect against storm surges.

But current techniques embrace a philosophy of “living with water”: Floods are inevitable, and it’s better to prepare for them than to build ever-higher dikes that may fail catastrophically.

Thousands of waterways are being connected so the country can essentially act as one big sponge and absorb sudden influxes of water. Some areas have been designated as flood zones. Houses that can float have been a building sensation.

Along the coast, the country has been spouting huge amounts of sand in strategic locations offshore and allowing the natural motion of waves to strengthen defensive dunes.

Venice, Italy: Sea level rise is a particular concern for this flood-prone city. It’s in the process of realizing an expensive and oft-delayed system of underwater barriers that would be raised in the event of flooding over 43 inches, higher than the 31-inch level that floods the famed St. Mark’s Square.

Venice, a system of islands built into a shallow lagoon, is extremely vulnerable to rising seas because the sea floor is also sinking.

The constant flooding puts the city’s considerable architectural treasures at risk. Plans for the new so-called Moses barriers will cost more than 4 billion euros.

Bangladesh: A low-lying delta nation of 153 million people, Bangladesh is one of Asia’s poorest countries, and one that faces extreme risks from rising sea levels. Its capital, Dhaka, is at the top of a list of world cities deemed most vulnerable to climate change, according to a recent survey by risk analysis company Maplecroft. The World Bank says a sea level rise of 5 inches would affect 20 million people living along the country’s 440-mile coast. Many of these people would be homeless.

Bangladesh is implementing two major projects worth $470 million that involve growing forests on the coastal belt and building more multistory shelters to house people after cyclones and tidal surges. Developed nations have so far provided $170 million to the fund.

Maldives: The Maldives, an upmarket beach paradise for tourists, has also become a symbol of the dangers of climate change.

Made up of hundreds of islands in the Indian Ocean, it’s one of the most low-lying nations in the world. Some scientists have said the Maldives could disappear within decades, and former President Mohamed Nasheed even proposed relocating all 350,000 inhabitants to other countries.

While other researchers say those fears may have been overblown, the country is taking measures to protect itself.

A seawall was built around the capital, Male, after flooding in the 1980s. That wall protected the city from the worst effects of the devastating 2004 tsunami, which temporarily put large swaths of the country underwater.

The country’s climate adaptation plans call for relocating residents from small vulnerable islands to bigger, better protected ones.

It’s also creating new land through land reclamation, expanding existing islands or building new ones, to ease overcrowding. The reclaimed land is being elevated to better withstand rising seas.

Cuba: Officials recently finished a study of the effects of climate change on this island’s 3,500 miles of coastline, and their discoveries were so alarming they didn’t immediately share the results with the public to avoid causing panic.

According to the report, rising sea levels would seriously damage 122 Cuban towns or even wipe them off the map by 2100. Scientists found that miles of beaches would be submerged while freshwater sources would be tainted and croplands rendered infertile. In all, seawater would penetrate up to 1.2 miles inland in low-lying areas, as oceans rose nearly 3 feet.

Those frightening calculations have spurred systemic action in Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean and one that is heavily dependent on beach-loving European and Canadian tourists. In recent months, inspectors and demolition crews have begun fanning out across the island with plans to raze thousands of houses, restaurants, hotels and improvised docks in a race to restore much of the coast to something approaching its natural state.

In the tourist resort of Varadero, the country faces a dilemma: Tearing down seaside restaurants and hotels threatens millions of dollars in yearly tourism revenue, while allowing them to stay puts at risk the very beaches that are the main draw.

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