Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Coasts
As we have seen, the IPCC reports that sea level could rise by between 27 cm and 98 cm
by 2100. This prediction is of major concern to all coastal areas, as rising sea levels will re-
duce the effectiveness of coastal defences against storms and floods, and increase the in-
stability of cliffs and beaches. In Britain, the USA, and the rest of the developed world, the
response to this danger has been to add another few feet to the height of sea walls around
property on the coast, the abandoning of some poorer quality agricultural land to the sea (as
it is no longer worth the expense of protecting it), and the enhancement of legal protection
for coastal wetlands, being nature's best defence against the sea. However, globally, there
are some nations based on small islands and river deltas that face a much more urgent situ-
ation (see
Figure 22
).
21. Climate change, societal coping range, and extreme events
For small island nations, such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and the Marshall Islands
in the Pacific, a 1 m rise in sea level would flood up to 75 per cent of the dry land, making
the islands uninhabitable. Interestingly, it is also these countries, which rely mainly on tour-
ism, that have some of the highest fossil-fuel emissions per head of population. Other ma-
jor concentrations of population who are at risk are those live by river deltas, including
Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand. A World Bank report concluded that human
activities on the deltas, such as dams and fresh-water extraction, were causing these areas
