As my thinking develops around Managed Retreat and the debatable lands of the English Orient, its hard to ignore all the flooding happening currently across the rest of the UK. This flooding is primarily pluvial, from rain over land rather than from incursions of sea (although the west coast has got a battering too) but the pattern of increasing indefensibility is common to both. A newly released report from the European Environment Agency, 'Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2012' offers some more sobering predictions. The map below comes from the report and shows increasing risk of coastal and river flooding in the UK.
Without the flooding even happening, it looks like risk alone is going to start causing economic damage to people living in prone areas, with insurance being either unavailable or unaffordable, making houses unsaleable. So we are already retreating, but are we doing it consciously, strategically, and in a manner that is fair and cares for people and the planet? Clearly not I would say.
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| Floods at Curry Moor, Somerset (May, 2012) |
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