Rising sea levels: an uncertain future for coastal communities

The question is what the potential impact on Sidmouth might be in the medium and long term – with the town preparing its Beach Management Plan, to be financed by the Environment Agency – and with a meeting of its advisory group coming up at the end of this month

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The EA has just posted a warning about the impacts of rising sea levels:

Actions include producing a new national assessment of flood risk, an updated national coastal erosion risk map and new long term investment scenarios, to better inform future investment decisions.

And it has produced a ‘road map’:

It will ensure that we make our communities more resilient to flooding and coastal change, so that when it does happen, it causes much less harm to people, does much less damage, and ensures life can get back to normal much quicker.

Which includes a lot of investment – as far as the government is concerned.

Although the press is a little more ‘sensationalist’ perhaps when reporting the comments of the EA’s CEO:

National publications including The Daily Mail, The Mirror, ITV News, The Daily Telegraph carried his comments. While regional publications including the Yorkshire Post, Eastern Daily Press and Dorset Live also highlighted his warnings.

Environment Agency launches flooding roadmap as it warns of “inevitable impacts of a rising sea level” – Defra in the media

This is from the Mail today:

The British towns at risk of being wiped from the map forever by rising seas and coastal erosion | Daily Mail Online

And this is from today’s Big Issue:

Some of the UK’s coastal communities will be forced to relocate as flooding increases in the coming years, the Environment Agency has warned. EA chief James Bevan has said rising sea levels were now “inevitable”, with no way to recover land that will be lost to coastal erosion or swallowed by the sea as climate change accelerates. “Let me come now to the hardest of all inconvenient truths, which is this: in the long term, climate change means that some of our communities cannot stay where they are,” Bevan will tell a conference in Telford today.

‘Inevitable’ that coastal flooding will force people to move – The Big Issue

The question is what the potential impact on Sidmouth might be in the medium and long term – with the town preparing its Beach Management Plan, to be financed by the Environment Agency – and with a meeting of its advisory group coming up at the end of this month:

Improved Beach Management Plan for Sidmouth – Vision Group for Sidmouth