8 | New Scientist | 31 August 2019Fieldnotes East Anglia, UKMoving away from the coast Rising sea levels mean that
a managed retreat for coastal communities is no longer a
case of if, but when and how. Adam Vaughan reportsJANE HAMILTON stands next to
a model of Dunwich in Suffolk,
UK, the “lost city” that was once
one of England’s largest ports, but
has been largely swallowed by the
sea after storms in the 13th and
14th century and years of erosion.
She accepts that people will have
to retreat in the face of a warming
world and rising seas. “It’s natural.
It’s like people dying, it does
happen,” she says.
As a resident of the remaining
village, that doesn’t mean she
wants to stand back and let it
happen. “It’s human nature
to preserve your community,” says
Hamilton. “I don’t accept: ‘That’s
fine, it’s all going to fall in the sea,
we’ll all move inland.’ ”
Dunwich is one of several
communities in East Anglia, an
area on England’s east coast, that
must decide whether to promote
a “managed retreat” inland or to
hold the line. In a recent article in
Science, researchers argued that
adaptation to climate change
means, in some places, “thequestion is no longer if retreat will
occur but how, where, and why”.
The UN’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change predicts
warming will bring a sea level rise
of up to a metre by 2100, and more
if the Antarctic ice sheet begins its
collapse this century. In England,
the Environment Agency (EA) has
said sea level rise can’t be fought
with “limitlessly high walls and
barriers” alone.
Juliet Blaxland, who lives a
few kilometres up the coast from
Dunwich near the crumbling cliffs
of Easton Bavents, recognises the
need to adapt. “In nature, the
most successful animals arenot necessarily the biggest and
fastest, but the most adaptable
to change,” she says. Historically,
around a metre of coast was lost
each year here, but recently, it has
been around 3 metres annually,
she says.
While Blaxland accepts that her
home probably has just a few more
years left, neighbouring buildings
reveal contrasting attitudes
towards coastal erosion. One is
the former house of Peter Boggis,
dubbed King Canute for building
his own coastal defences by the
cliffs, in defiance of authorities.
Down the road, a pair of holiday
homes, the Watch Houses, were
built with steel frames so they can
be easily moved inland by crane.
In the past, the UK government
offered money to help people
relocate, as well as assisting with
planning issues around new
homes for them, but no such
schemes are active today.
“We are very much responding
to the climate emergency,” says
Julie Foley of the EA. Its policy isto defend the majority of
England’s coastline, and moving
people in response to climate
change is the exception, she says.
The EA recently finished the
£70 million Ipswich Tidal Barrier
in Suffolk, a large “hold the line”
defence. More hardware and
engineering like this will be needed
in the region, says Mark Johnson
of the EA, such as an increase in
the height of beaches in Norfolk to
help protect Bacton Gas Terminal.
David Ritchie of East Suffolk
Council says managed retreat
can be positive, pointing to the
Benacre Estate, just north of
Easton Bavents, where there
are plans to flood 100 hectares
with seawater to create an
intertidal habitat.
In Shotley, near Ipswich,
Richard Wrinch stands on
the doorstep of his farmhouse,
overlooking a glorious vista of
fields bordering the river Orwell
that flooded during a 2013 storm
surge. The farmer has been talking
with the EA and others for morethan a decade about giving up
land to the sea. “I have no direct
problem with a managed retreat,
because that’s what humanity has
done for millennia,” says Wrinch.
What is missing is clarity from
authorities, he says.
A glimpse of a possible future
for Wrinch lies across the county
border in Essex. At Fingringhoe
Wick nature reserve, the sea wall
was deliberately breached in
2015, so seawater now covers
22 hectares of former farmland.
Mark Iley of the Essex Wildlife
Trust, which worked with the EA
on the scheme, says losing hard-
won land is “very controversial”,
but that the project has been a
roaring success for both human
and avian visitors.
The motivation was to create
salt marsh habitat, which is fast
disappearing throughout England.
However, the approach could
be applied elsewhere if the two
challenges – finding funding and
willing landowners – are overcome,
says Merle Leeds of the EA. ❚More climate change online
For more on our warming planet
newscientist.com/subject/environmentCoasts are in retreat across
East Anglia, including here
at Happisburgh in NorfolkJASONBYE^ FOR
NEW^
SC
IENTIST“It’s human nature to
preserve your community.
I don’t accept: ‘That’s fine,
it’s going to fall in the sea’ ”