This morning the Australian media has picked up on the threat to coastal communities of rising sea levels and climate change generally, as set out in an October 2009 final report to the Australian Parliament's House Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts.
This report makes forty-seven recommendations which clearly show that Australia is underprepared to deal with; a) natural disasters resulting from climate change-induced adverse weather events; b) continual sand/land erosion: c) widespread seawater inundation of urban areas; d) sustained flood events; e) mass evacuation of populations; f) contamination of water supplies; g) private and public insurance risks; h) loss of coastal land value and potential no-go zones for human occupation; i) inadequate building codes; j) biodiversity degradation; k) loss of indigenous heritage sites and l) loss of large offshore islands/territory.
Essentially these problems are well-known to all tiers of government, as there have been a number of previous climate change impact assessment reports containing recommendations which for the main have languished on departmental desks for want of political nerve.
The level of inaction at state and local government levels (both of which have direct responsibility for coastal land and how it is used) is quite frankly astounding at times.
Shire councils such as Clarence Valley Council continue to support large-scale unsustainable development proposals, like the move to place over 2,000 extra residents on flood-prone land in the Clarence River estuary which is already beginning to feel the first effects of climate change.
State Governments such as the NSW Rees Government actively encourage this global warming myopia, create coastal policy documents with the aim of transferring liability while still allowing development and fail to move decisively against such inappropriate development as the West Yamba proposal currently before its Planning Minister, Kristina Keneally.
Download Managing our coastal zone in a changing climate: the time to act is now:
Clarence Valley coastal zone has worst erosion in decades this year
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