[toeslist] Sea level rise causes English coast to crumble
Susan Hunt
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
International Herald Tribune
Published: April 13, 2007
BECCLES, England: This winter a 50-foot-wide strip of Roger
Middleditch's sugar beet field fell into the North Sea, his rich East
Anglian lands reduced by a large fraction of their acreage. The
adjacent potato field, once 23 acres, is now less than 3 - too small to
plant at all, he said.
Each spring Middleditch, a tenant farmer on the vast Benacre Estate
here, meets with its managers to recalculate his rent, depending on how
much land has been eaten up by encroaching water. As he stood in a
muddy field by the roaring sea one recent morning, he tried to estimate
how close he dares to plant this season.
"We've lost so much these last few years," he said. "You plant, and by
harvest it's fallen into the water."
Coastal erosion has been a fact of life here for a century, because the
land under East Anglia is slowly sinking. But the erosion has never
been as quick and cataclysmic as it has been in recent years - an
effect of climate change and global warming, according to many
scientists. To make matters worse for coastal farmers, the British
government has stopped maintaining large parts of the network of
seawalls that once protected the area.
Under a new policy that scientists have labelled "managed retreat,"
governments around the globe are concluding that it is not worth
taxpayer money to fight every inevitable effect of climate change.
Land loss at Benacre "has accelerated dramatically," said Mark
Venmore-Roland, the estate's manager. "At first it was like a chap
losing his hair - bit by bit, so you'd get used to it. But last few
years it's been really frightening."
With higher seas level and more vicious storms created by warming, he
and Middleditch say, the coastal fields are rapidly disappearing, as
the low cliffs on which the fields sit slip into the water in huge
chunks.
A report this year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
estimates that rising seas will force 60 million people away from their
coastal homes and jobs by the year 2080.
Another study, the Stern Report, released last December by the British
government, projected hundreds of millions of "environmental refugees"
by 2050. That category includes both people whose land is flooded off
and those whose pastures are parched by drought.
Most are expected to be poor people in developing countries, like
fisherman in Asia or shepherds in Africa. Middleditch, a grizzled
balding man in Wellington boots, and Venmore-Roland, with his upper
class accent, plush yellow corduroy trousers and walking stick, are
certainly not typical of this group. But their plight shows that even
here in Europe, livelihoods are being affected, particularly in rural
areas.
In the developed world, city dwellers may be perturbed by hotter
summers, fiercer rains, and ski slopes that are barren of snow. But
here along the rural East Coast of Britain, climate change is far more
pressing and palpable.
"We are a symptom - this is happening all along the Norfolk and Suffolk
coast," Venmore-Roland said of the land loss that extends hundreds of
kilometers up the coast, which he measures with a global positioning
system each year. "And there is no compensation. The government says
this is nature taking its course."
Walkers and birders who frequent these famous Broads, or salt marshes,
will find that the public hiking path through Benacre that once
declined gently from a low grassy plateau toward the beach, now ends in
a precipitous drop of 16 feet, or five meters, to the water; the rest
fell into the sea in February.
The 6,000-acre, or 2,400-hectare, Benacre Estate is losing swaths of
land 30 feet wide along its entire two miles, or three kilometers, of
coastline each year. Inland trees that were once sold for timber are
dying or no longer commercially valuable, because the proximity to the
salty sea air has left them stunted.
Farmers like Middleditch are losing fields and trying to adjust crops
to an unpredictable climate. "It's hard to know what's normal weather
these days," said Middleditch, 59, who has farmed here for four
decades, with a shrug. "It's a lot harder to keep crops going."
Middleditch is now planting hemp. In Cornwall, in the southwest of
Britain, warmer and wetter weather have led farmers to experiment with
Mexican jalapeC1o peppers.
"Farmers are on the front lines of climate change. They're out there.
It's affecting their business," said Tanya Olmeda-Hodge of the Country
Landowners Association.
A survey by the group early this year found that 75 percent of pig and
sheep farmers in England, and 35 percent of farmers in the east of
England, felt climate change was already affecting their business.
As climate change has accelerated erosion on the east coast of Britain,
many scientists and politicians have decided it is no longer viable to
defend land here. Under the policy of managed retreat, farmland, nature
preserves and even small villages are surrendered to the water.
"This land is very sensitive to climate change because it is very
low-lying and doesn't tolerate high temperatures like we've had the
last few summers," said David Viner, a climate expert at the University
of East Anglia. "The government will only protect land it thinks of as
economically important, and on an economic level you can say that makes
sense but of course that's not the whole picture."
A landmark scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, released in February, predicted temperature rises of between
1.1 and 6.4 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century, caused by
human activities. That, the panel said, could produce rises in sea
level of 7 to 23 inches, or 18 to 58 centimeters, and a great increase
in stormier weather.
In Indonesia, the environment minister has predicted that 2,000 of the
country's islands could be swallowed by the seas in the next 30 years,
and said that little can be done to defend them.
In wealthier parts of the world, vast engineering projects can often
prevent the sea's encroachment, Viner said, but the cost is often so
high that it becomes politically unacceptable.
Here in the Broads, there is a host of conflicts about who deserves to
be spared the effects of climate change, and what should be sacrificed
to the advancing water.
Local council meeting have pitted conservation groups against farmers;
landowners against environmentalists; national politicians against
villagers. Then there is the question of who if anyone should
compensate people for the land and income lost.
"These are the Broads, there is a duty to protect these sites," said
Michael Horton, a lawyer for the Benacre Estate. "But the government's
policy is one of managed realignment, which means 'do nothing' - they
say they can't protect it."
"We have some sympathy because the problem is huge, but some things can
be done. We don't get compensation, and then they ask us to give over
land to create new nature reserves to replace what has been lost. It's
not overly palatable, you can imagine."
The Sizewell Nuclear power station, visible from the beach at Benacre,
will be defended, of course. But defending one stretch of coast often
means that the sea presses with more force at the points nearby.
Farmers and landowner groups are calling for government payments and
for consultation in deciding what must be saved.
They would also like permission to build their own private sea
defenses. Last year a farmer named Peter Boggis, whose land abuts
Benacre, paid a contractor to add dirt to the bottom of the sea cliff
that abuts his land. He was ordered to stop, after a national
conservation groups charged he was tampering with a site of scientific
interest.
Farther up the coast, in Happisburgh, four or five homes from this
village of 850 people fall into the sea each year, as the cliff beneath
them crumbles.
While they appeal for national help, the North Norfolk District Council
and Coastal Concern Action Limited have started limited work to shore
up Happisburgh's cliff with rocks, funded in part by a Internet appeal
campaign called "Buy a Rock for Happisburgh."
"The U.K. won't let London flood," Viner said, "but the national
government's not going to worry about an odd village or farm."