Atlantic Rising: Sea Swallows Ghanaian Village, More to Come
by Stacy Feldman - Aug 26th, 2008
"Every year the sea comes closer. We keep moving the village and we are being pushed down to the lagoon."
-- Ebenezer Koranteng, 70-year-old villager, Totope, Ghana in the AP, August 26, 2008
Unlivable in five years. That’s Koranteng’s prediction for his Ghanaian coastal village of Totope, population 1,000. Rising seas are driving them out, with no place to run.
The AP reporter observes for himself:
Abandoned concrete buildings are half submerged under sand. Thatched huts have been repeatedly moved back. And about one mile offshore, an entire settlement lies deep under the water, submerged many years ago. Fishermen say they have to detour around the old underwater buildings which snag their nets.
It’s happening all over Ghana's coastline:
Every few years, residents of a string of villages leave their homes and build new ones farther back, abandoning them to the encroaching sand and water.
For more, see last week’s report in the AFP: West Africa's Coastline Redrawn by Climate Change. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), warns that
up to 1,000 kilometers of land may be lost in the Volta Delta owing to sea-level rise and inundation.
According to the findings of the UN IPCC’s Fourth Assessment of 2007, the world's oceans have been rising an average of .12 inches per year since 1993. Many top climate experts have made projections way beyond the IPCC scientific consensus though, predicting a catastrophic one meter or more sea level rise by 2100 under business as usual.
Certainly something for delegates in Accra, Ghana to think about -- the ones wrapping up round three of UNFCCC talks this week, still unwilling to make any firm commitments to curb global climate change.
(Source: The Associated Press)
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