Louisiana coastline disappearing

A new Al Jazeera mini-documentary on how sea-level change and wild weather threatens an American state and the underfunded  Coastal Master Plan - a  plan to protect against land loss by restoring the wetlands. Watch it here: The Disappearing Lousiana Coastline .

The video also features members of Gulf South Rising, a 'regional movement of coordinated actions and events to highlight the impact of the global climate crisis on the Gulf South region (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida). Through collaborative events and actions around strategic dates in 2015, GSR demands a just transition away from extractive industries, discriminatory policies and unjust practices that hinder equitable recovery from disaster and impede the development of sustainable communities. This year-long initiative 1) builds regional movement infrastructure; 2) connects and convenes frontline communities around ecological equity and collective healing; 3) advances regional efforts of indigenous tribal and land sovereignty; and 4) shifts the regional narrative from resilience to resistance.'

Delegates from Gulf South Rising are currently attending the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference Of Partiesin Paris.

Brighter Later

The sea photographed from Essex - one of the images in Brian David Stevens' collection Brighter Later a series of photographs looking out to sea from every coastal county in Britain.


'Looking out to sea you truly are looking into the future, seeing the weather and the waves that will at some point arrive at the shores of this island, you predict their inevitable, unstoppable approach. You look out rather than look in.'


The book of photographs is available from tartaruga

Impermanence rules the sandy marge

from John R. Stilgoe's What is Landscape?

Shifting Shores

The National Trust has just issued a new report on coastal erosions: Shifting Shores. It marks the increasing move towards adaptation strategies as it becomes clear that action to stop climate change is happening too slow and too late. The authors write:

'In our new report  'shifting shores – playing our part at the coast', we are calling for a bold and imaginative approach to coastline management, involving an understanding of how nature works, moving towards adaptation and away from maintaining engineered defences, where appropriate, while being sensitive to community needs.' 

I particularly enjoyed the glossary at the back, with these gems:

Managed re-alignment – allows an area that is not currently exposed to flooding by the sea to become flooded by removing frontline coastal protection. Note – can also occur as a consequence of ‘force majuere’ i.e. unmanaged re-alignment. [My emphasis]

Uncertainty – a situation where the current state of knowledge is such that the order or nature of things is not fully understood and thus absolute outcomes cannot be defined or guaranteed.

Lights on Bradwell!

John Betjeman on Southend pier Feburary 1980

'I attended one day of the inquiry held last week by the Ministry of Fuel and Power at Maldon, in Essex, about the atomic power station the Central Electricity Board has decided to erect on the Blackwater Estuary at Bradwell. It seems odd that the Minister should be the judge of the activities of one of his own departments, and that Ministries like Agriculture and Fisheries and Housing and Local Government should not be the judges. At this inquiry I should have thought either of them would have been entitled to that position. But that is something to do with law and I realise my ignorance of it when I attend an inquiry like this. The skill of the lawyers is amazing, particularly the way they lead a witness into a trap and pounce. The Central Electricity Board, of course, has its professional witnesses, but for us members of the public the ordeal is terrifying.

You must imagine the crowded hall beside the Congregational Church in Maldon, the amiable inspector and his two assistants on the platform. Below him on his right, the men from the Central Electricity Board; there seemed to be about twenty-five of them in dark, neat suits, hard collars and horn-rimmed spectacles, with files and papers (first-class fares and time paid). They reminded me of men from 1984, or the novel by C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength. On the other side were we, the mad-eyed preservationists, the shrewd farmers and representatives of the fishing and oyster interests, all giving up time and money voluntarily to save the Dengie Peninsula. I hope this does not sound smug, but it is the truth, and it is worth noting that counsel appearing on behalf of objectors to Government schemes generally do so free or for very low fees. Between us sat the Essex country people, some thinking the atomic station would bring them riches, others wanting to continue the way of life their fathers lived before them.'

- John Betjeman c.1958

THE NEXT EDITION OF MANAGED RETREAT WILL BE....

LIGHTS ON BRADWELL!

Maplin Sands Airport

Model of the proposed Maplin Sands Airport development on show to the press in the 1970s.

An article in The Guardian, 'King's Cross airport? The outlandish plans for London that almost got built' includes this photograph of a model of the once proposed Maplin Sands airport development, planned for the island of Foulness and the tidal sandbanks in the Essex Archipelago.

Read more about that with some fascinating (but frustratingly small) illustrations here.

Friends of the Earth joined protests against the airport with their Maplin Manifesto.

This sinking isle

The Guardian looks at some of those who refuse to accept the inward march of the sea and remain in precarious coastal properties: 'This sinking isle: the homeowners battling coastal erosion'.

'For fear of looking weak, few politicians dare admit the limitations of coastal defences in a century of rising seas. After the winter storms of 2013, Neil Parish, a Tory backbencher, cried out in parliament: “We have got to force the sea back and keep it out, not retreat from it like we have been for years.” This is natural territory for Ukip, whose heartlands – and winnable seats in the 2015 election – lie along England’s vulnerable east coast. Michael Baker, Ukip’s candidate for North Norfolk at the general election, insists: “Defence is the first duty of government. It is not only necessary to protect our country from invading human forces, but also from invasion by the sea and rivers.” '