Evaluate the view of the likely impacts of climate change for coastal areas? (20 marks)
In this answer, I will assess the likely impacts of climate change on coastal areas on a local scale and on an international scale. Climate change is the rise of the earth’s global temperature made worse by your anthropogenic impacts on the carbon cycle. As a result, sea levels across the world are rising by two millimetres a year on average.
One negative social impacts of climate change in coastal areas as the innovation of low-lying islands. Rising global temperatures has led to an increase in the melting of the polar ice caps, which has turned into freshwater and entered the global oceans. Therefore, has led to a eustatic sea level rise. As a result, island nations like the archipelago of Kiribati or some of the First Nations to be directly affected by climate change. This is because twenty of their 33 islands are on inhabitable, hence many of its residents have begun migrating to its capital of Tarawa. Therefore, has made it a high-density area. With rising sea levels has led to soil contamination where the high salt concentration in soils has reduced crop yields drastically, leading to food shortages.
However, in 2014 the president had purchased a 20-kilometre squared area of land on a Fijian island to grow these crops. They are then imported back to the nation to feed its population. As a result, this has managed to deal with the issue of food shortages in the short term because in the long term, the over farming of the same soil will reduce its minerals leading to a mineral deficient soil, which will inevitably reduce crop yields.
Secondly, and environmental impacts of climate change in coastal areas is the deeper waters it creates. The increasing the magnitude of water in the global oceans have led to deeper waters, which is ideal conditions needed for destructive waves to form. Therefore, and increasing the frequency of destructive waves would turn many areas of coastlines into high energy environments. As a result, we are likely to see more negative sentiment budgets because the rates of erosion will be greater than deposition full to stop therefore, an increase in the number of landforms of erosion. In addition, in the context of the UK, areas like the Holderness coastline will see or cheating rates of greater than 9 metres a year. As a result, this is environmental negative.
Although, it would lead to a decrease in the incentive for people to live in coastal areas because in the future these areas are going to become more dangerous, hence become less attractive to live there. Therefore, we will see a change in the spread of people because there would be an inward shift of people to rural and urban areas.
Overall, I think that the impacts of climate change will be negative for coastal areas around the world in the future. In the UK, we will either see an outward migration of people away from coastal areas or the government spending increase on coastal management. Whereas, in less developed areas like Kiribati, we don’t need to wait to see into the future because the impacts are currently happening. It has been predicted that the entire nation will be inundated by 2050.