Ironic that Britain is about to sink into the same sea that made her great so many centuries ago. Bon Voyage!
"For 700 years Dunwich in Suffolk has been losing a battle against the waves. In the 14th century it was a major port. Now it is a tiny village, famed for the buildings and fields that have vanished beneath the sea.According to legend, it is possible during storms to hear the bells of the lost churches of Dunwich ringing under the sea.
This is a poetic reminder that our coast is under attack. But what was once a gradual process is speeding up. Some 70% of England's eastern beaches are in retreat and spectacular cliff collapses at Beachy Head in Sussex are becoming a regular event - the most recent was last month.
Global warming is being blamed. Thanks to car fumes and the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal and wood), gases such as carbon dioxide are increasing in the earth's atmosphere. They "trap" more and more of the sun's rays, stopping them from bouncing back into space and so the world and its seas are becoming hotter. The combination of polar ice melting and saltwater expanding as it warms is causing sea levels to rise, threatening England's low-lying areas. Storms are also becoming more frequent and severe as the atmosphere heats up, and this is increasing wave damage to our coasts. Average wave height has risen 25% in the last 25 years.
Did you know? 10,000 hectares of mud flats and salt marsh are at risk of inundation. 1sq km of Essex marsh is lost each year. According to English Nature 13,000 hectares (130 sq km) of English shoreline could be lost in the next 20 years. 10 million tonnes of sand is dredged out of the sea every year, much of it help replace eroded beaches. Ironically, it is thought that the dredging increases the rates of beach erosion
To make things worse, Britain is still adjusting to the end of the last ice age in a way that increases the pressures on the south's coastline. Scotland, freed from the weight of ice, has been gradually tilting upwards for the last 10,000 years. Meanwhile, southern England's land levels are sinking 1.5mm a year.
Higher sea levels are putting at risk some of Britain's most important natural landscapes such as the mud flats and salt marshes of eastern England. These are among the last wildernesses in the country and are home to a huge variety of living things, including rare plants and insects. They also teem with the worms, snails and fish that millions of migrating birds rely on.
What should be done? Severe flooding along the south-east coast in 1953 killed 307 people and made 24,500 homeless. Thousands of acres of farmland were swamped. The response was to create "hard" defences - concrete walls and barriers designed to hold back the waves and high spring tides. Many of these are now crumbling. The cost of maintaining them and building new ones is rising. The Environment Agency spends £19.2m a year and local authorities spend millions more.
Critics feel this money is being wasted. They say that stopping erosion in one place often causes trouble elsewhere. For example, hard defences preventing cliff retreat on Yorkshire's Holderness coast may be denying Lincolnshire beaches the replacement sands they need.
Environmentalists argue that while built-up areas need protecting, farmland at risk should be abandoned to become new mudflats and marshes. "Managed retreat" like this would take advantage of the coast's ability to adjust itself in the face of rising sea levels. Sea walls may be needed but with new salt marsh in front of them, breaking up the waves and catching sediment (soil particles), they could be lower and cheaper.
The government is starting to think the same way. Farming interests are likely to resist, particularly because there is no guarantee, at present, of cash compensation for people who give up their land to the sea. Jerome Monahan Did you know? 10,000 hectares of mud flats and salt marsh are at risk of inundation. 1sq km of Essex marsh is lost each year. According to English Nature 13,000 hectares (130 sq km) of English shoreline could be lost in the next 20 years. 10 million tonnes of sand is dredged out of the sea every year, much of it to help replace eroded beaches. Ironically, it is thought that the dredging increases the rates of beach erosion." |
