Page 47 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine December 2023

bne December 2023 COP28 I Special focus I 47
In response to erosion and flooding, cities often resort to engineering solutions like seawalls, which may exacerbate the issue. Ambitious adaptation strategies are rare, hindered by a lack of financial, human, and technical resources. Regional authorities are insufficiently engaged, hindering coordination, and knowledge exchange among practitioners is limited.
Call for international action
The mission of Sea’ties is to elevate
the adaptation of coastal cities on the international agenda. Ahead of COP28, they are advocating for greater support, sharing key messages with elected representatives, scientists, project developers and private companies to secure the transition needed.
“Our role is to advocate for greater support for the adaptation of coastal cities faced with rising sea levels,” says Lebbe.
“We want this eminently important issue to be high up on the list of priorities on the international agenda. To date, we are still underestimating the scale of the population displacements and economic losses that rising sea levels will cause. The financial and technical tools are also lacking.”
The set of Policy Recommendations
to Coastal Cities to Adapt to Sea Level Rise were developed over four years. Currently endorsed by 80 organisations globally, these policy recommendations target local, national, regional and international decision-makers, with four key priorities, namely: planning long-term adaptation responses tailored to the local context; prioritising social imperatives in adaptation policies: developing new ways to generate
and share operational knowledge on adaptation; and, building a sustainable finance approach for coastal cities.
As explained by the Sea-ties Ocean & Climate Platform, adaptation requires a shift towards long-term planning that anticipates diverse scenarios of sea level rise while remaining flexible to potential environmental and societal changes. The recommendations advocate for a mix of solutions ranging
from hard and soft protection to ecosystem-based adaptation, hybrid solutions, accommodation, planned relocation, and others.
Immediate and substantial GHG emission reductions are paramount, necessitating a systemic societal transformation for effective adaptation measures, says the document.
Adapting coastal cities demands long-term planning that integrates diverse sea level rise scenarios and remains flexible. It also calls for urban development and other activities such as sand extraction to be limited along shorelines and vulnerable inland areas to avoid disrupting natural processes and weakening buffering ecosystems like dunes, mangroves and salt marshes. New development in high-risk zones should be discouraged.
The document recommends minimising reliance on protection-based measures unless absolutely necessary, reserving such responses for heavily urbanised sites facing significant challenges or as
a temporary solution. Instead, the focus should be on the protection of existing coastal ecosystems and promoting restoration in suitable locations to leverage their capacity for containing coastal erosion and mitigating the impacts of extreme climate events.
Innovative strategies
Some cities are already moving beyond traditional protective infrastructure like seawalls. “Cities are at the forefront of adaptation action and although there
is no perfect, one-size-fits-all solution, many cities are turning away from protective infrastructure only (such as seawalls) to instead implement a mix
of several typologies of solutions,” says Lebbe, giving examples such as elevated infrastructure, nature-based solutions and planned relocation.
One example is the 14 municipalities of the Sète Agglopôle Méditerranée in France, which carried out a project including dune restoration, the repositioning of a road, beach nourishment and the deployment of sand-filled geotextile bags.
Lebbe also points to the actions of the Thames Coromandel District Council in New Zealand, which planned ahead for the next 100 years, and adopted 138 pathways, each for a specific section
of the shoreline, that are responsive to change and can be updated as future needs evolve.
Cost of change
Yet an important question remains:
is adaptation prohibitively expensive for some developing world cities?
The upfront investment is indeed substantial, but the cost of delayed action is even higher, points out Lebbe. Coastal cities are not only densely populated but also critical economic hubs; most future global GDP growth is centred around cities located in coastal regions.
One forecast indicates that sea level rise could result in annual damage of as much as 9.3% of global GDP in 2100. In Europe alone, damage is currently estimated at €1bn a year, for a total of €959bn in assets potentially at risk, and it could be as high as €11bn by 2050 and almost €814bn by 2100.
“The upfront investment needed to kick-start adaptation is expensive for all coastal cities, and even more so for cities in countries with a developing economy. As such, many cities turn to short-term measures or are locked in recovery action,” Lebbe tells bne IntelliNews.
“However, the cost of delayed action is even starker. Coastal cities are densely populated areas and critical economic hubs, where many communities, activities, infrastructure and lifelines are located.
“Cities will be increasingly burdened
by the recovering costs associated
with coastal flooding, storms and erosion, and will increasingly require assistance. As costs of adaptation rise and dedicated investments fall far short of needs, enhanced funding from both public and private sources is urgently required and must be directed towards long-term adaptation strategies,”
Lebbe adds.
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