A scientific study advises raising atolls six meters or more to ‘save’ small island states
Build artificial islands and raising the altitude of existing ones appear to be the best formulas to save small island states, such as Kiribati and Tuvalu, from the Rising sea levelscaused by the climate change. Scientists maintain that to protect areas like the Maldives or the Marshall Islands from being engulfed by the waters, islands must rise to six meters or more.
The sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that by the middle of this century, 1 billion people will be exposed to much greater risk of flooding due to rising sea levels and will face storm surge, increased tidal flooding, or even permanent flooding.
The UN Secretary General himself, Antonio Guterresat a meeting of the UN Security Council at the beginning of last February, warned that the rise in sea levels due to climate change is a direct threat to millions of people, and warned that the world could witness ” a mass exodus of populations on a biblical scale“.
This future would pose many social challengesincluding “cultural decline, loss of identity, integration difficulties, job uncertainties, and also questions about who will receive the migrants,” the University of East Anglia, in the United Kingdom, which participated in the study, said in a statement. analysis.
In the case of the Maldives, which currently has 500,000 inhabitants, more than 80% of the territory, in more than a thousand islands, is less than one meter above sea level. The researchers maintain that for the protection of all these lands, in the long term, it will inevitably be necessary to raise its height above sea level.
Island climate refugees
With current sea level rise forecasts, the Maldives’ 200 or so inhabited natural islands could be submerged by 2100.
The authors thus provide an alternative to the general pessimistic view that ultimately the final response to sea level rise will be forced migrationhe abandonment of atolls and even entire countries and the appearance of climate refugees islanders.
“Nations with low-lying atolls are very vulnerable to climate changeespecially due to sea level rise. Strict climate change mitigation will slow but not stop rising waters, which will continue for centurieswhich will require additional long-term adaptation,” says the study, published in ‘Environmental Research: Climate’.
There is an additional problem: the increasing urbanization it is concentrating population in a few centers, especially around the capital islands, creating additional pressure as most atoll nations are ‘land poor’ fit to live on.
The authors argue that structural adaptation through elevation of the terrain and formation of artificial islands it is possible, and can be used “to maintain sufficient areas of land above sea level to meet social and economic needs for several centuries.”
The study took the Maldives as a reference, especially in and around the capital (Grand Malé), where significant developments have already taken place and more are expected. Migration to urban centers, especially Malé, is widespread and the trend continues, implying that many other islands are unpopulated or abandoned.
Innovative and positive solutions
The Maldives has already built several artificial islands, one of them next to Malé’s, Hulhumalé, using sand extracted from the sea, and plans to build several more to accommodate the needs of rapid urbanization and the takeoff of the tourism sector.
“Tourism is critical to the Maldivian economy. Resort islands require a different environment than urban islands. They could sustain themselves with a soft engineering that reinforces the natural processes that produce the atolls,” the study authors note.
“While the advance of the land and the uplifting of islands provide a technical solution In the face of sea level rise, any application must also address the additional political, human, physical, engineering, and economic-financial challenges that arise.”
Enabling artificial islands, so that the population can move slowly in an adaptive manner, and raising the existing ones supposes “a realistic alternative to widespread assumptions about forced migration and national abandonment,” say the scientists. One solution, to raise the ground, would also be useful and applicable even on continental coasts. I would only have to assess environmental implicationsthe researchers clarify.
As for the costpoint out that the sand costs 7.5 euros per cubic meter, which translates into about 7.5 million to raise one meter one square kilometer of land.
“The ideas presented here are a starting point and provide a development and adaptation plan for island communities to develop innovative and positive solutions that have the potential to allow them to remain on these islands for many centuries,” says the study
“Nevertheless, the creation of artificial islands is not a reason not to mitigate climate change. It is essential to make more efforts in this regard to reduce the risks,” the authors state.
Reference study: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2752-5295/acb4b3
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