Climate accommodation
Climate accommodation refers to the local strategies and adaptations implemented in response to rising sea levels caused by global warming. Coastal nations around the world are increasingly confronted with the challenges of rising seas, which threaten many communities and ecosystems. Various approaches have emerged, including the managed realignment of coastlines, where land is intentionally surrendered to the sea to allow for natural processes, as seen in parts of Great Britain. This strategy may protect certain areas while creating new habitats, but it has also sparked debate among stakeholders, including farmers and environmentalists.
In the Netherlands, where much of the land lies below sea level, innovative solutions like floating homes are being developed to address the risk of flooding. The Dutch government has proposed significant investments in reinforcing sea defenses, such as raising dikes and widening coastal dunes. These measures aim to protect vulnerable regions from the escalating impacts of climate change. As global sea levels rise more rapidly, the need for effective climate accommodation strategies will continue to grow, highlighting the importance of balancing environmental sustainability and community needs in the face of ongoing climatic challenges.
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Climate accommodation
DEFINITION: Local responses to rising sea levels involving adaptations such as surrendering of land to the sea, raising dikes, and building homes designed to rise with water levels
The anticipation of rising sea levels around the world as a result of global warming has led many coastal nations to develop strategies that can protect their people while making accommodations to the reality of their changed coastlines.
Rising seas associated with global warming have challenged many millions of people living close to oceans around the world. Policies and building practices have been changed in some countries to adapt to, or accommodate, these changes.
British Strategies
Parts of Great Britain’s coastline are afflicted by the same problems as the eastern and Gulf coasts of the United States: The land is subsiding as ice melt and thermal expansion slowly raise sea levels. The United Kingdom Climate Impact Programme, a government-funded program at Oxford University, forecasts that the sea level could rise by as much as 1 meter (3.3 feet) by late in the twenty-first century. In addition to climate change, isostatic rebound (the rise of Scotland’s coast following the last ice age) is contributing to subsidence of the land southward along the English coast. As the sea rises 3 millimeters (0.118 inch) per year abreast of Essex, the land itself is half as rapidly, producing a net sea-level rise averaging 4.5 millimeters (0.177 inch) per year.
In a strategy officially termed “managed realignment,” the British government decided to allow the sea to flood low-lying farmland rather than attempt to fend off the invading waters by building ever-higher defenses. The policy, which will eventually allow the encroaching sea to submerge several thousand hectares, has been welcomed by environmentalists. Farmers, however, have contended that the strategy is unviable and have demanded more flood defenses. The affected area of the coast ranges from the Humber estuary, around East Anglia, to the Thames estuary and west to the Solent. Strategic withdrawal also has been planned for sections of the Severn estuary. The first site surrendered to the sea was in Lincolnshire. About 81 hectares (200 acres) of farmland were flooded by seawater at Freiston Shore after diggers broke through the flood-defense banks to create a salt-marsh bird reserve.
Until around the end of the twentieth century, the Thames Barrier, built to protect London and surrounding areas from unusually high river tides and storm surges, closed an average of two or three times a year. However, as of mid-2024, the barrier had been closed 221 times. According to BBC news, the Thames Barrier needs to be 50 centimeters (20 inches) higher to protect against future flooding and storm surge caused by climate change. According to the United Kingdom's government in 2024, 152,800 square kilometers (59,000 square miles)—home to about 1,000,000 people—in and around London are vulnerable to flooding because they are below high-tide levels, some by as much as 3.7 meters (12 feet).
Dutch Strategies
The Dutch fear that rising storm surges could inundate much of the Netherlands, large areas of which have been reclaimed from the sea. Fears have been expressed that the country’s western provinces may flood. The Hague, for example, may become uninhabitable as low-lying suburbs of Amsterdam return to marshland or open water.
By 2010 the Dutch had been forced to anticipate surrendering 200,000 hectares (494,211 acres) of farmland to river floodplains and had begun a major construction program involving floating homes. Pieter van Geel, the Dutch minister of housing, spatial planning, and the environment, stated in 2004 that half of the Netherlands is below sea level, and so beyond a certain level of sea-level rise, it is not feasible for the nation to build more extensive or higher dikes in many areas. Above 2 meters (6.6 feet) of additional sea-level rise, much of the land that the Netherlands has reclaimed from the ocean over several hundred years could be lost.
During mid-2008 a Dutch governmental commission recommended that the country spend $144 billion to reinforce its sea defenses through the year 2100 as a precaution against sea-level rise. The measures proposed include widening dunes facing the North Sea and raising the height of dikes along the coastline and rivers. According to Euro.news in 2023, sea levels are rising more than twice as fast as they did in the twentieth century.
In the Netherlands, the threat of sea-level rise also is being met with amphibious homes. One development of forty-six homes in the town of Maasbommel, for example, features two-bedroom, two-story houses with foundations of hollow concrete attached to iron posts sunk into a lake bottom; these homes can accommodate water levels as much as 5.5 meters (18 feet) higher than the levels that existed when they were built.
Bibliography
Archer, David. The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Cline, William R. The Economics of Global Warming. Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1992.
Dutch, Steven I., ed. Encyclopedia of Global Warming. 3 vols. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2010.
Lyall, Sarah, “At Risk from Floods, but Looking Ahead with Floating Houses.” New York Times, April 3, 2007.
McGranahan, Gordon, Deborah Balk, and Bridget Anderson. “The Rising Tide: Assessing the Risks of Climate Change and Human Settlements in Low Elevation Coastal Zones.” Environment and Urbanization 19, no. 1 (2007): 17-37.
Pilkey, Orrin H., and Rob Young. The Rising Sea. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2009.
Rosenthal, Elisabeth. “As the Climate Changes, Bits of England’s Coast Crumble.” New York Times, May 4, 2007.
"The Thames Barrier--Protecting London and the Thames Estuary for 40 Years." Gov.UK, 8 May 2024, www.gov.uk/government/news/the-thames-barrier-protecting-london-and-the-thames-estuary-for-40-years. Accessed 16 July 2024.
van Tets, Fernande. "Floating Cows and Giant Storm Barriers: How the Dutch Plan to Survive Rising Sea Levels." Euro.news, 12 Jan. 2023, www.gov.uk/government/news/the-thames-barrier-protecting-london-and-the-thames-estuary-for-40-years. Accessed 16 July 2024.
Warren, Jess and PA Media. "London's Thames Barrier Marks 40th Anniversary." BBC News, 8 May 2024, www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-68972351. Accessed 16 July 2024.