Rising Sea Levels

Rising sea levels are impacting every coastal and island population on Earth. Fiji is not immune. Villages, infrastructure, marine life, coral reefs, agriculture can all be impacted by flooding, higher storm surges, king tides, and tsunamis.

There are many knock-on effects. They lead to loss of coastal ecosystems like mangroves. Crop yields may reduce because of increasing salt levels in irrigation water. Damage to ports disrupts sea trade. The sea level rise projected by 2050 will expose places currently inhabited by tens of millions of people to annual flooding. Without a sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, this may increase to hundreds of millions in the latter decades of the century.

Societies can adapt to sea level rise in multiple ways. Managed retreat, accommodating coastal change, or protecting against sea level rise through hard-construction practices like seawalls are hard approaches. There are also soft approaches such as dune rehabilitation and beach nourishment. Sometimes these adaptation strategies go hand in hand. At other times choices must be made among different strategies. Poorer nations, such as Fiji, may also struggle to implement the same approaches to adapt to sea level rise as richer states.

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