Whenever I read media stories proclaiming that millions will be displaced or coastal cities will “drown” due to rising sea levels, I go to the original studies (care of Google Scholar) and invariably learn these stories left out crucial details, like the researchers had based their predictions on implausible “worst-case” emissions scenarios or assumed that humans would do next to nothing to adapt to the rising seas: an absurd assumption, given that humans have been adapting to rising seas for centuries*. Why stop now?
Some random evidence that humans are working hard to protect coastal areas from the encroaching sea:
According to the just released Responding to Rising Seas: OECD Country Approaches to Tackling Coastal Risks, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and United Kingdom all have coastal adaptation plans in place.
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is helping Louisiana restore the Mississippi River Delta in a bipartisan collaboration to rebuild land and provide storm protection. EDF is consulting with coastal planners and decision makers on how “natural infrastructure” – such as dunes and barrier islands – can lessen damage and complement man-made protection, such as levees.
Coastal Resilience is a program developed through a public-private partnership between The Nature Conservancy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Red Cross, University of California at Santa Cruz, and other organizations to support planners and engineers around the world who are working to address coastal hazards, particularly sea level rise and storm surge, with adaptation and risk mitigation solutions
At least 19 states and Puerto Rico enacted legislation in 2019 related to flood mitigation. For example, Connecticut authorized municipalities to establish climate change and coastal resiliency reserve funds that can be used to fund payments for property losses and land acquisitions due to climate change.
In October 2018, Congress passed the Disaster Recovery Reform Act. Considered the most comprehensive disaster reform legislation since Hurricane Katrina, the new law covers the full spectrum of disaster phases but specifically increases the federal investment in pre-disaster mitigation.
Singapore’s government recently announced it will be spending up to S$100 billion to defend against rising seas. Plans include building sea walls, reclaiming land, raising buildings, as well as nature-based solutions such as expanding mangrove areas and afforestation.
And here’s a nice little table of some current adaptations to rising seas:
Of course, the plans and strategies keep evolving. In an interview with Yale 360, landscape architect Kristina Hill noted that in most cases the best response to sea level rise is not the extreme one of building walls or abandoning the coast, but of creating “hybrid edges" that blend natural ecosystems and human-made infrastructure to help cities and towns adjust to rising tides. More specifically:
Use more wetlands, sand dunes, horizontal levies and beaches to protect against sea encroachment.
Build more resilient sewage treatment plants and roadways
Re-grade muddy river landscape so people wouldn’t be exposed to sewage stranded on the banks at high tide
In some places build houses on piled foundations and design the houses so that they can accept damage and be rebuilt so long as the pilings are designed to last a hundred years.
Use wet ponds, rain gardens, and wetlands around housing to absorb extra storm water when needed.
Plus, catastrophe is not going to hit us tomorrow anyway. Even the teeny island nations seem to have some breathing room:
“Over the past decades, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization in the face of sea‐level rise. A reanalysis of available data, which cover 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls including 709 islands, reveals that no atoll lost land area and that 88.6% of islands were either stable or increased in area, while only 11.4% contracted.” - Virginia Duvat (2019) “A global assessment of atoll island planform changes over the past decades
For more on what’s being done to deal with rising sea levels, check out:
Mia Lu and Joanna Lewis (2015) China and US Case Studies: Preparing for Climate Change - Shanghai: Targeting Flood Management Georgetown Climate Center
OECD (2019), Responding to Rising Seas: OECD Country Approaches to Tackling Coastal Risks, OECD Publishing, Paris.
Scussolini, P., Tran, T. V. T., Koks, E., Diaz‐Loaiza, A., Ho, P. L., & Lasage, R. ( 2017). Adaptation to sea level rise: A multidisciplinary analysis for Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Water Resources Research, 53, 10,841– 10,857. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017WR021344
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*Fun fact: 86% of California’s coastline has been eroding ever since last glacial period ended and sea level began to rise.