The effect of climate change is anything but hypothetical to retired naval officer German Alfonso. Just ask him about the time his neighbourhood in the historic coastal city of Cartagena, Colombia, became an island. For the last five years, Alfonso, 74, has watched tides rise higher and higher in the Boca Grande section of Cartagena. This month, ocean tides briefly inundated the only mainland connection to his neighbourhood, a converted sandbar that has seen the construction of 60 high-rise condo and hotel towers in the last decade or so.
“Before, people thought it a normal phenomenon. But we’re becoming more conscious that something is going on,” Alfonso said. “If the sea keeps rising, traffic could just collapse.”
According to a recently updated World Bank study, Alfonso and his neighbours have reason to be concerned. Not only are the effects of global warming more evident in Latin American coastal cities, the report says, but the phenomenon could worsen in coming decades because sea levels will rise highest near the equator.
Colombian naval Captain Julian Reyna, a member of a government task force monitoring climate change, said the sea level around Cartagena, world famous for its Spanish colonial fortifications and beaches, has risen as much as one-eighth of an inch per year over the last decade, an increase that scientists expect to accelerate in coming years.
According to some scenarios that the World Bank authors say are not that far-fetched, Cartagena and the rest of the Caribbean coastal zone could see sea levels rising between 18 inches and six feet by the end of the century. Even at the lower end of those projections, parts of this city would be knee deep in seawater.
World Bank climatologist Walter Vergara cautions that the projections are based on trends and factors that could change, but he is worried that Colombia’s entire Caribbean coastal zone could see relocations of urban centres. Other Latin and Caribbean cities especially at risk include Veracruz, Mexico; Georgetown, Guyana; and Guayaquil, Ecuador, he said.
“The projections are based on assumptions generally accepted by the scientific community and do not include the cataclysmic effects of possible advanced ice melting in the Antarctic or Greenland,” said John Nash, a World Bank economist who co-wrote the study with Vergara.
Cartagena’s chief city planner, Javier Mouthon, said the local government is fully aware of what could be in store, and is making plans beyond ‘immediate impacts’ that include a long-term ‘adaptation process’. That includes new roads and relocating city facilities to avoid permanently flooded zones.
Cartagena is studying the possible construction of collection pools and requiring all new construction to be built on foundations nearly two feet higher than currently specified. “We are quite concerned,” Mouthon said. “It’s a problem that grows year by year.”
Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos has begun convening coastal governors and mayors at workshops to hammer home the possible effect of climate change and the need to adjust urban and regional planning accordingly. However, recent interviews in the region indicate many residents are only dimly aware of global warming and its influence.
