How Rising Sea Levels Are Changing Coastal Communities

As climate change is accelerating, rising sea levels increasingly threaten coastal communities. The threat rising sea levels cast on coastal communities is far beyond threatening to submerge coastal buildings and facilities. There are more nuances to this topic than many perceive.

Rising sea levels do not just approach communities at a constant rate of a few centimeters per year. They come in the form of floods instead. Communities impacted by rising sea levels will receive more frequent floods than they have before, and each of these floods can come at a greater magnitude and cause more harm and displacement than before.

Rising sea levels also harm the coastal ecosystems that these coastal communities rely on. For example, by increasing water levels in mangrove forests, rising sea levels can kill mangrove trees and deprive nearby coastal communities of their storm defense and source of fuel and medicine.

Rising sea levels also lead to other social issues. In Miami, the rich has purchased high altitude communities that the poor used to live in and raised the rent so that the original residents of the community had to move out. Through this approach named climate gentrification, the rich in Miami gets to live in the high altitude communities that were once occupied by the poor and gain some temporary shelter from the rising sea levels – at the cost of making other people homeless.