Sonia Ferreira’s two-story house with a pool and garden on the coast of Brazil was another victim of the rising tides of the Atlantic Ocean, driven by climate change.
On a recent trip, the 80-year-old retiree looked next to the pile of debris that left the home he left before it was destroyed in 2022 by powerful waves in Atafona, north of Rio de Janeiro.
“I avoided coming back here because we have a lot of memories. It’s very painful,” he said, showing pictures of the house he built 45 years ago on his cell phone.
Global warming, combined with the sedimentation of the Paraiba River, has contributed to coastal erosion in Atafona, and caused the destruction of 500 houses, including the collapse of a four-story building on the beach.
This is one of the many coastal communities that have lost their naval battles up and down Brazil’s 8,500 km Atlantic coast.
Sea levels have risen 13 centimeters in the region near Atafona in the past 30 years and could rise another 16 centimeters by 2050, according to the United Nations’ “Rising Oceans in a Warming World” report released last month.
The sea race is towards coastal communities
Coastal areas like Atafona could see the sea level rise inland by 150 meters in the next 28 years, said Eduardo Bulhoes, a marine geologist from Fluminense Federal University.
“The combination of climate change and global warming … with the river no longer transporting sand to the beaches of Atafona, has caused a disaster for its residents and there is no hope that this situation will be reversed,” he told Reuters.
As surprising as it is, Atafona’s plight is not unique to Brazil.
The beach at Ponta Negra, one of the most popular seaside resorts on Brazil’s northeastern shoulder, is also shrinking. In the past two decades, it has lost 15 meters of white sand to the sea. The local government is bringing in sand from elsewhere in an expensive effort to reclaim the beach.
Along the banks of the mighty Amazon River, a fragile ecosystem is at risk of biodiversity loss as the river weakens due to the worst drought in history, sending salt water from the sea to the surface.
“Saline water is rising in the river and this will change the whole environment of that area,” said oceanographer Ronaldo Christofoletti, from the Federal University of Sao Paulo.
Last year, salt water reached almost as far upstream as Macapa, a city 150 kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon, killing freshwater fish and affecting local fishing communities.
Climate change is causing a dramatic rise in sea levels
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s scientific assessment body related to climate change, reported that sea levels are rising faster than ever, doubling in the last 10 years to 0.48 centimeters per year, compared to 0.21 centimeters per year from 1993 to 2002.
Christofoletti said the loss of land in coastal towns and beaches is inevitable as sea levels rise, questioning why urban planning has not changed.
“It is shocking to see houses being destroyed in Atafona. But houses should not have been built there. You should have woods, a mangrove swamp, a sand bank, an environment that could be prepared to hold the sea,” he said.
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