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13 March 2022 2.00 h

Carles Ibáñez

“We have to decide whether to anticipate or react”

One of the authors of a recent report on the health of the coast by the Advisory Council for the Sustainable Development of Catalonia gives his take on how to improve the situation

If you were to pri­ori­tise one thing in the re­port, what would it be?
We’re los­ing a sig­nif­i­cant part of our beaches and our deltas be­cause the flow of sand from rivers and streams has been cut off and also be­cause this flow has been ham­pered along the coast due to struc­tures such as ports, which break the ge­o­mor­pho­log­i­cal bal­ance of beaches. More than half of our beaches are re­ced­ing, and this will speed up due to the deficit in sed­i­ment, ris­ing sea lev­els and the im­pact of storms. In a few decades, our beaches will be in a crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, not only be­cause of their im­por­tance as nat­ural and eco­nomic as­sets, but also be­cause they are the first and often the only nat­ural de­fen­sive bar­rier we have in the world to pro­tect prom­e­nades, hous­ing or other in­fra­struc­ture, such as train lines.
What can be done?
We can only do three things. First, try to re­cover some of the sand and sed­i­ment that came from in­land areas, and not only for the beaches but also for the man­age­ment of rivers and streams, which are also de­grad­ing. Sec­ond, re­duce ero­sion as much as pos­si­ble, but not at any cost. Bring­ing in sand every year, apart from the costs and the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact, does not solve the prob­lem; all it does is re­lo­cate sand. Be­yond the oc­ca­sional con­tri­bu­tion of extra sand, which we should try to keep to a min­i­mum, we need to think of more com­pre­hen­sive restora­tion so­lu­tions, in­clud­ing restor­ing dune sys­tems, which act as storm pro­tec­tion, restor­ing beach veg­e­ta­tion, and try­ing to re­store posi­do­nia ocean­ica (Nep­tune grass) under the water, which in many cases acts as a brake on ero­sion. Third, it would be nec­es­sary to change the in­fra­struc­ture, re­design, tweak, move or re­move it de­pend­ing on the case. Adap­ta­tion to cli­mate change is local and de­pend­ing on the beach’s char­ac­ter­is­tics, one ac­tion or an­other will be needed to re­duce the im­pact.
It could mean de­mol­ish­ing a prom­e­nade or shore­front houses...
This is where we need all the op­tions, and it will de­pend on the ur­gency, the need and the cost ben­e­fits of doing so. Doing noth­ing is not an op­tion be­cause it is in­evitable, and re­plac­ing more nat­ural beaches with break­wa­ters is a bad strat­egy. If we lose the beaches it will im­pact in­fra­struc­ture, and let­ting this hap­pen is bad busi­ness for tourism and for the well-being of the peo­ple who live in Cat­alo­nia. We must de­fine the time­frame we have to act on the dif­fer­ent points of the coast and de­cide which ac­tion is most ef­fi­cient, or most suit­able for each sit­u­a­tion. Then we must ex­e­cute it as a pri­or­ity. Al­though ac­tion of all kinds is needed, per­haps we need to re­design first. That being said, there may come a point when all of this is not enough and we have to re­move or de­mol­ish struc­tures. The issue is whether to an­tic­i­pate or react.
You say we have to de­fine the time­frame. What are we look­ing at?
This type of analy­sis hasn’t been done yet and needs to be. From the data this would give us, and through an analy­sis by ex­perts, the po­ten­tial sce­nar­ios for sea level rise and the pos­si­ble in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of storms, we would be able to make a cal­cu­la­tion and pro­vide a dead­line for each spe­cific case.
But if I ask you about the Maresme train line right now, for ex­am­ple?
The issue of the Maresme train line should be ad­dressed im­me­di­ately. There are al­ready se­ri­ous prob­lems and an al­ter­na­tive pro­ject al­ready ex­ists. In this case, we might say that we’re al­ready late and no ac­tion has been taken. The longer it takes, the more prob­lems we will have, and there are other cases that may take 20 years. In the Ebre Delta, in the Mar­quesa area, ac­tion must also be taken im­me­di­ately be­cause it is af­fected by each storm. There are areas where we al­ready know that we need to act ur­gently, but also ju­di­ciously, with ac­tion that is well car­ried out and that min­imises the im­pact.
Are there too many peo­ple in coastal towns?
The gov­ern­ment’s urban mora­to­rium is look­ing at this. We’ve built enough on the coast, prob­a­bly too much, and some of it will have to be de­mol­ished in the fu­ture. I don’t know when, but at some point there will be a his­toric op­por­tu­nity to de­mol­ish de­graded and ugly struc­tures and re­design them to give more space to na­ture and cit­i­zens, to free up spaces and re­duce den­sity.
There is also the issue of flood­ing.
While it will be a slow process, it is a mat­ter of decades. How­ever, a study has been pub­lished that talks about a huge ice sheet in the Antarc­tic the size of Britain that is melt­ing faster than sci­en­tists thought. If it were to break away from the Antarc­tic con­ti­nent in five to ten years, it could lead to a rise in sea level of 60 cen­time­tres. Even 60 cen­time­tres would be enough to cause us se­ri­ous prob­lems and force us to do things that we now think we can leave for twenty years. How sea lev­els rise due to the cli­mate emer­gency will also greatly de­ter­mine the pace at which we will have to act.
What about soft­en­ing our shore­line?
That con­sists in try­ing to elim­i­nate any in­fra­struc­ture that does not allow the shore­line to move, whether a break­wa­ter – which acts as a shore­line be­cause the beach has dis­ap­peared – or lin­ear in­fra­struc­ture, such as ports, which help to pro­tect some stretches but cause prob­lems in oth­ers be­cause they break the bal­ance of sand shift­ing along the coast. Any re­moval of rigid el­e­ments and re­plac­ing them with more flex­i­ble el­e­ments, whether nat­ural, semi-nat­ural or com­bined with rigid el­e­ments that have less vol­ume, is a move in the right di­rec­tion.
Do we have too many mari­nas?
If the mari­nas were the prob­lem, the sit­u­a­tion would be saved. We have too much of every­thing: mari­nas, air­ports, main roads, in­dus­trial es­tates... be­cause we signed up to the urban wave that was in vogue in pre­vi­ous decades, when pol­i­tics was ba­si­cally about in­au­gu­rat­ing new pro­jects. For all the towns and all the may­ors to be happy, they had to have every­thing. This is a bla­tant plan­ning mis­take be­cause there’s in­fra­struc­ture that we don’t need but that ex­ists and has to be main­tained. All of this needs to be stream­lined. How many ports does the Cata­lan coast need? Well, that’s for a group of ex­perts to analyse and say what is ideal. Each local au­thor­ity build­ing its own port is not sus­tain­able.

fea­ture en­vi­ron­ment

A good tool for conserving the coast

“We’re committed to a coastal conservatory. The French model has worked very well. It’s a public consortium that raises funds from taxes coming from tourist activity to conserve, restore and prevent the deterioration of the coast. In 40 years, they have systematically bought land on the coast to prevent it from being developed, to restore it or to preserve traditional activities there. If we’d done this here, we wouldn’t have these problems now. It’s a smart policy from France, many problems have been avoided and they have room for manoeuvre that we don’t have in Catalonia, where so much of the coast is urbanised and where it’s harder and more expensive to apply solutions. Still, there are options and the possibility to do interesting things, but we’ll always have many more limitations.”

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