Yet another one for the green room but I’ll leave it here for a bit first.
I watched on the news last night about the beautiful island of Tuvalu in the south Pacific. It seems that the King Tide, (what they call the highest tides of the year) are now beginning to breach the island. And it’s not just a case of the tides coming up the beaches, as the islands are atolls, (which means they have formed on top of coral reefs) the sea level is beginning to come up through the coral and flood the interior of the island too. Now that’s just cheating! Locals on the island have never seen the tides so high.
Now, we obviously shouldn’t use anecdotal evidence to prove the sea level has risen. Say the oldest islander is 80 and he/she can remember 75 years back, if the King Tide hasn’t been as high as it is now in the last 75 years it doesn’t really prove owt. I don’t really deal with coastal flooding that much but I have been working on a project recently. In this country New build is not allowed on land that is below the 1 in 200 year tidal flood, (this is the flood that occurs in average every 200 year) On top of that depending on what area in the country you are in and what type of development you need to add on the predicted sea level rise. In the south east on England this is expected to be over 1 m in the next 100 years. It’s just staggering.
The highest point on Tuvalu is 4.5 m above the current highest King Tide. The IPCC, (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have predicted another 0.5 m rise. The Tuvaluans are demanding aid to build some sort of defence. The trouble is as the water comes up through the coral there really is no technological fix, (except maybe some sort of giant pond liner). This leaves the farm land covered in salt and useless.
It will be the poorer places that are effected first as this demonstrates. Places like Holland are very much at risk but have the cash to throw at building larger defences, Tuvalu doesn’t. Bangladesh maybe next, I think I read somewhere that it’s highest point is 4 m above current sea level. There are 123 million people, (estimated) in Bangladesh and this is rising rapidly. It is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and also one of the poorest. What’s going to happen to them? It’s a catastrophe waiting to happen.
