Four strategies to face sea level rise

Coastal cities and places are struggling to find new solutions against the rising seas using: protection, adaptation, withdrawal or avoidance

Architectural solutions to climate change

Text and drawing by Frits Ahlefeldt, DrawnJournalism.com

All around the world the seriousness of sea level rise has moved up the concern barometer.  It might be the most unknown climate emergency. And among others UN Director-General Antonio Guterres among others has called for action as rising seas threaten countless coastal communities and cities around the world. Coastal communities where over 900,000 million people live, and where only few knows about the changes that are coming.

Here are the four strategies often used to deal with sea level rise – Protection, adaptation, withdrawal or avoidance:

1. Protection
   First options is to keep the water out with walls, dikes and pumps. Or with nature-based solutions such as dunes, rocks and barrier islands. These are classic and well-tested solutions. But unfortunately the reality of sea level rise can come to flood these fast
2. Adaptation – accommodation
   Second option is to change to more innovative new house types that can float, rise above the sea on stilts, or have visors and rubber hoses that can be inflated and protected in coming extreme scenarios.
3. Withdrawal – retreat
   If first and second options fails as sea levels rise, the third solution is to move places and even entire urban communities to higher ground. Around the world this is in full swing. With Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, with 10 million inhabitants and already partially below sea level, as the best-known example.
4. Avoidance
   The last and most long secure option is possible where new living places are planned from scratch. Here it is possible to plan and build new places and cities high above, and at a good distance from the sea. Using new knowledge and understandings to keep communities and living places out of the flood zones as much as possible.

Sketching up some of the strategies and new climate architecture experiments that are being tested:

More drawn journalism climate change posts

Keywords: Rising seas, sea level rise, climate change, global warming, climate crises, drawnjournalism, visual journalism, illustration, drawing, news, tegnet journalistik, drawn journalism havstigning havstigning2023conf01