The tide is coming: why our beaches are vanishing

Australia is crumbling into the sea. Experts estimate there are hundreds of beaches and coastal communities around the country at risk from coastal erosion. Within decades, as sea levels rise, that number could be in the thousands.

Last year, the Western Australian state government identified 55 “hotspots” where coastal erosion is expected to cause serious issues within 25 years. Towns up and down the coast are seeing roads washed away, and buildings and homes under threat.

In July last year, WA Emergency Services Minister Fran Logan told the ABC that dumping sand on the coast to try and hold the sea back was not a viable long-term solution. Entire coastal communities would simply need to retreat.

It’s the same all over the country. Sections of Victoria’s iconic Great Ocean Road risk being washed away within five years. At Inverloch, south-east of Melbourne, erosion has melted away a remarkable 50 metres of the coast in seven years — including 20 metres since the beginning of 2019. Truckloads of imported sand and a “wet” sand fence have been dumped as protection. The remedy has failed.

Read the story from Crikey by Charlie Lewis and Kishor Napier-Raman - “The tide is coming: why our beaches are vanishing.”

The plastics crisis is more urgent than you know. Recycling bottles won’t fix it

West Wales, last weekend. The old foam mattress lying waterlogged on an otherwise clean beach might have been at sea for months before it was washed up on the tide. A large bit of it had broken off, and the rest was crumbling. It was a clear threat to wildlife, so we heaved what was left of it above the wave line and promised to come back to dispose of it properly when it was dry.

 Illustration by Eva Bee

But how do you safely dispose of an old mattress made of billions of tiny plastic particles leaking formaldehyde and other potentially dangerous chemicals? Do you burn it? Bury it? Do you expect the company who made it to come to collect it? Answers to environment secretary Michael Gove, who today pledged to stem the tide of plastic debris by announcing a consultation on a plastic-bottle return scheme for England, which aims to get people to recycle more.

Read John Vidal’s comment from The Guardian - “The plastics crisis is more urgent than you know. Recycling bottles won’t fix it.”

Southeast Asia closes island beaches to recover from climate change, tourism

BANGKOK - More popular Southeast Asian islands will be off limits to visitors this year as officials seek to protect eco-systems crumbling from warming seas and unchecked sprawl, despite the risk to tourism revenues and tens of thousands of jobs.

Southeast Asian beaches are being closed to allow
them to recover from the effects of climate change.

Thailand will shut Maya Bay, which famously featured in "The Beach", starring Leonardo DiCaprio, for four months a year, from June. In the Philippines, officials plan to close Boracay island for six months at the end of April.

"Islands have very fragile eco-systems that simply cannot handle so many people, pollution from boats and beachfront hotels," said Thon Thamrongnawasawat, a marine expert in Bangkok.

Read Rina Chandran’s story from ABS/CBN News - “Southeast Asia closes island beaches to recover from climate change, tourism.”

India's crippling drought parches the land, forces migration and causing suicides

In Bundelkhand’s sweltering
 heat, Dayaram and his
 wife remove silt from
the bottom of a dried-out pond.

TIKAMGARH DISTRICT, India — For years, Lakshman Pal, 28, planted wheat and tended to his small field here. Each season, he hoped for rain. He looked up at the sky and waited for the showers that normally came. But for the past two years, they’ve hardly come at all. His crops eventually withered and died, crumbling to dust.

In early May, Pal returned from a spell of work in the distant state of Haryana, where he earned 250 rupees, or about $3.70, a day toiling long hours as a laborer. Fifteen other members of his family also migrated to various cities, searching for work and leaving behind women, children, the elderly and a handful of younger men to tend to the land. Pal borrowed money from the bank and a local moneylender to pay for medical treatment for his mother, who has cancer, and he was now deep in debt.

Back in Khakron, his village, Pal found himself not only in debt, but also with no water for his fields, no crops to harvest, no food for his family, no money for his mother’s treatment. He awoke one morning in mid-May, before dawn, and killed himself in his field

Read The World Post story - “Parched Land. Farmer Suicides. Forced Migration: Drought Is Crippling Rural India.”