Threat of rising seas looms over coastal Africa

From:Reuters

* Coastal residents say sea levels already rising

* 56 million people live in low-lying coastal areas

* Major lagoon cities such as Lagos could be submerged

By Tim Cocks

ABIDJAN, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Africans living on the coast, who face the loss of their cities, homes and livelihoods to rising seas, are less interested in haggling over greenhouse gas emissions than getting aid to move to higher ground.

Speaking as talks on a global climate deal in Copenhagen ran into disagreements over how to share the burden of emissions cuts, some residents of low-lying coastal Africa said they had more pressing concerns.

"We want the authorities of the world powers to come and rescue the poor people from the sea," said Diakite Abdullaye, 46, looking over his shoulder at the ruins of a house he said had already been destroyed by the advancing ocean.

"If they can't stop the sea rising, then help us move somewhere else," said the resident of Ivory Coast's biggest city.

Rising sea levels caused by the melting of polar ice caps are seen by climate experts as largely unavoidable for centuries to come, even if substantial cuts in carbon dioxide emissions are made.

"Like a slowly boiling kettle, the oceanic system has very long response time to changing conditions and the seas will go on slowly rising for centuries even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow," wrote Mark Lynas, a British climate expert and author who advises the government of the Maldives.

The U.N.'s climate change panel in 2007 predicted global warming would raise sea levels by between 18 and 59 cm (7 and 24 inches) this century. Many climate scientists believe the estimate is conservative, and a rise of a metre or more is likely.

Either way, it could spell disaster for much of coastal Africa, especially densely populated tropical West Africa whose economic centres sprawl along the coast.

The United Nations estimates Africa has 320 coastal cities and about 56 million people living in "low lying" coastal zones, those less than 10 metres above mean sea level.

ENCROACHING TIDE

Some expects say sea levels have risen by about 20 cm since the start of the Industrial Revolution in northern Europe.

That is no surprise to residents of Abidjan's Port Bouet, where abandoned concrete shacks litter the beach. Some have lost their front walls. Scaffolding is all that remains of others.

"Twenty years ago the sea was far away from here," said Samassa Awa, 39, an unemployed nurse whose wooden shack has been flooded by the Atlantic many times. "You see all these destroyed houses? Many people fled but we decided to stay."

Poor planning and the haphazard construction of homes on reclaimed land subject to erosion has compounded the problem.

In Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, millions may have to move. The city is home to 15 million people spread over creeks and lagoons. The Lagos state government has been battling to reinforce the long sand spits that protect the mouth of the main lagoon from the Atlantic.

Gilbert Pandy, a resident of the Congolese capital Brazzaville, said advancing seas had washed away a village cemetery. "We are exposed to a disaster ... Sadly, no one cares," he said.

Africa's island paradises such as the Seychelles could be among the first to suffer.

Rolph Payet, an adviser to the government who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore for his work on climate change, told Reuters half of the Seychelles' islands were barely two metres above sea level.

"All of our infrastructure, telecommunications, fuel, ports, airports, are located on the coast," he said, adding that tourist resorts in outlying islands risked being submerged.

"The most frustrating thing is that we can do something. If an asteroid hits the planet, fine, we will all be doomed, but we are in a situation where we can actually solve the problem." (Additional reporting by Richard Lough in Antananarivo and Christian Tsoumou in Brazzaville; editing by Andrew Dobbie)

President drives climate message home

From: Virtual Seychelles

President James Michel was on Wednesday scheduled to address the Copenhagen summit and hammer home his call for the urgent need to counter climate change.

He has, over many years, been beating the warning drum, and the global audience was expected to be more attentive and action-oriented as efforts to reach a new agreement replacing the Kyoto Protocol reached a climax.Mr Michel led Seychelles’ high-level team including Minister for Environment, Natural Resources and Transport Joel Morgan, who arrived there on Tuesday.In the team were secretary of state Jean-Paul Adam, the President’s special adviser Dr Rolph Payet, our ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations Ronny Jumeau and principal secretary for environment Didier Dogley.Also present will be Wills Agricole from the Department of the Environment, who is our focal point for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Lyndy Bastienne representing non-governmental organisations.Parties to the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol are expected to agree on a “package” of outcomes defining the international response to climate change for the coming decade. Seychelles, as a member of the Alliance of Small Island States, is proposing a reduction of greenhouse gas concentrations to below 350 parts per million and a global average temperature no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.A press release from the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Transport said: “Parties will have to agree on a coherent financial architecture for climate change, guided by agreed principles and with equitable governance and simplified access procedures.

“This should aim at ensuring the provision of direct access to funds, and that funding provided specifically for climate change adaptation efforts is not simply subtracted from existing development assistance.

“Seychelles will push to ensure there is enough funding commitment for both adaptation and mitigation measures for vulnerable and most-affected countries.”

Seychelles accepting 'sinking feeling'

From: SciTechbox

DENIS ISLAND, Seychelles – Camille Hoareau stands on Denis Island's bank of creamy-white sand, absolutely area copse acclimated to abound a few years ago and area the angle will anon bathe if all-around abating surges on.

"See those? They all went bottomward recently," he says, pointing to the chaotic roots of casuarina copse felled by the ever-advancing beach.

Hoareau believes this baby privately-owned coralline island in the arctic of the Seychelles archipelago has diminished by a few acreage already back he became acreage administrator seven years ago.

"The accomplished point of the island is about 2.5 metres (eight feet), so it doesn't booty continued for an island like this one to be swallowed up," he says.

Scientific analyses factoring in melting glaciers and ice caps, added baptize from Greenland and Antarctica and thermal amplification of abating ocean baptize adumbrate that sea levels could acceleration globally by up to two metres this century.

For many, altitude change charcoal a hardly abstruse angle that may one day absorb accessory sacrifices such as active electric cars and affairs solar panels.

But for the Seychellois and added bodies active on below islands, altitude change is a actual affair that actually knocks on their advanced aperture every morning and poses a actual existential question.

"Where will the baptize be in 10, 15 years? All-around abating has afflicted our point of appearance on a lot of things," says Paul Horner, the administrator of Denis Island resort.

"The after-effects are already lapping my advanced backyard so now I'm architecture a home for the accouchement in the mountains" on one of the Indian Ocean archipelago's granitic islands.

A two-metre acceleration in baptize levels would calmly flood the runways of the all-embracing airport -- which brings in the tourists that annual for 80 percent of the country's adopted bill balance -- and put the basic Victoria at risk.

As a all-around accord to radically barrier carbon emissions in Copenhagen looks annihilation but certain, the Seychelles fears that tourists will anon crave diving accessory to access their apartment in the archipelago's abounding affluence hotels.

"Time has run out... Even if we are accustomed a actual ample sum of money, how are we activity to anticipate a apple ancestry armpit like Aldabra atoll from activity under?," asksSeychelles Environment and Transport Minister Joel Morgan.

Pacific, Caribbean and Indian Ocean islands such as Barbados, Kiribati and the Seychelles feel let bottomward by the world's rich, big-polluting countries whose elites like to absorb their holidays on their beaches.

At a acme in New York in September, the Alliance of Baby Island States (AOSIS) issued a acknowledgment belittling the planet's powerhouses for sealing their doom by changing about the affair of carbon emissions.

We are "profoundly aghast by the abridgement of credible appetite aural the all-embracing altitude change negotiations to protect... accessible countries, their peoples, culture, acreage and ecosystems from the impacts of altitude change," they said.

At the key UN altitude talks involving 190 nations in Copenhagen, baby islands were the aboriginal to put advanced a abstract calling for huge all-around carbon emissions and ambition a cap of 1.5 or two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit ) in all-around warming.

Several canicule into the meeting, island states were accomplishing what their best to accomplish their choir heard.

A boyish citizen of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific asked Australia to acceptable her nation's approaching altitude refugees. The tiny Pacific archipelago Tuvalu took on giants China and India and alleged for a abeyance of the conference, and the admiral of the Maldives, the acclaimedIndian Ocean day-tripper paradise, fabricated addition amorous appeal, weeks afterwards captivation a chiffonier affair beneath water.

For his part, Seychelles Admiral James Michel hopes to affect on apple admiral that they too accept a lot to lose from absolved altitude changes, admitting a few decades afterwardsbaby islands accept been wiped off the map.

"We will lose big, but we will abide to altercate our case afore the world's powers. We feel that we are actively underestimating the abeyant impacts of altitude change, which may end up costing the planet a lot more," he said in a account to AFP.

Michel's appropriate adviser on altitude change Rolph Payet, whose role as advance columnist of the Intergovernmental Panel on Altitude Change won him the Nobel Peace Prize forth with above US carnality admiral Al Gore in 2007, takes the appearance that baby nations can accomplish the best by themselves.

"Even if we do article now, we won't see the appulse for addition 20-25 years, but we accept to act," he says. "We are blame for anybody to do that, to advance in sustainability, like abating the coastline."

Looking at the collapsed copse bordering his shrinking paradise island, Camille Hoareau is crumbling no time and alive relentlessly to win his own chase adjoin the altitude clock.

"Here we accept a arrangement on Denis island, area attention is chip in the way the auberge is run. Tourists accord to the accomplishment in the amount they pay and it's acceptable added and added important to them," he explains.

"The best aegis adjoin abrasion is trees, so we accept to bulb as abounding as possible... I don't apperceive what's activity to appear out of Copenhagen, but appropriate now it's about bodies demography responsibility."