The coming tides

Along Guyana’s beleaguered coastline, the high tides rush in from the rippling grayish-brown expanse of Atlantic Ocean, where the latest lucrative oil wells are being drilled deep below the seabed.

As the jousting for the next five-year round of national governance drags on, with an array of political parties and presidential candidates springing forth before the March 2, 2020 early polls, public squabbling intensifies over how to spend the unprecedented upcoming purse of royalties and riches, before the first commercial oil is soon pumped to the surface by Exxon Mobil.

Yet, the impoverished newcomer petrostate must be blind to failing and falling infrastructure, since it is fighting and often losing an expensive centuries-old battle against the raging walls of water that regularly roar over the visibly short sea walls, the fresh ribbon of rocks quivering along the latest breach, and past the straggler clumps of green mangrove, flooding farmlands and homes.

The battered villages of the Mahaicony district that is mostly precious rice country, still carry the old names of colonial plantations, like the usually quiet Dantzig, bearing the German origin of a former owner. Columbia, Glazier’s Lust, Prospect, Harmony Hall, Rebecca’s Rust, Carlton Hall, Broomhall and Fairfield, they tell of the mottled history of rival European rule and the perpetual dream of wealth and grandeur that has been found and lost here.

When the latest ferocious spring tides swamped the area, neither the sprawling multi-storey modern mansions nor the humble wooden cottages were spared on the northern side, with shocking drone footage revealing the extent of the flooding, and the faint green tree line that once demarcated the low-lying land and looming sea that stretches to the far horizon.

A common historical term that has nothing to do with the season, a “spring tide” is derived from the concept of the wave “springing forth.” Spring tides occur twice each lunar month. During full or new moons, when the Earth, the sun, and the moon are nearly in alignment, average tidal ranges are slightly larger. The gravitational pull of the sun and that of the moon on the Earth, causes the oceans to bulge more than usual, causing high tides to be taller and low tides a little lower than average. Neap or moderate tides occur when the sun and moon are at right angles to each other, or during the first and third quarter moon, when the orb appears “half full.”

Affected farmers, whether simple subsistence with a few heads of livestock and a kitchen garden, or the rice moguls with vast tracts of golden grain, are worried about their losses, mounting debts and the years-long soil damage from salt intrusion.

In several regions, traumatised residents and first responders are struggling to cope on these frightening frontlines of climate change, including at vulnerable settlements such as Stewartville where the door of a koker broke away and had to be hurriedly replaced with temporary sluices. The Civil Defence Commission is busy responding to these emergencies, distributing sanitation and hygiene hampers, including along the West Coast of Demerara, which was “bombarded by waves with an approximate height of 10 feet” according to its Director General, Lieutenant Colonel Kester Craig, in a Facebook post. Overtopping has affected Region Three communities ranging from Den Amstel, Hague and Anna Catherina to Uitvlugt and Parika.

Stabroek News reported that Sadaar, an Ocean View, Uitvlugt resident who lives a few feet away from the ocean, said just his fence was knocked down after the first wave crashed over the seawall. He noted the water level in his house last Monday was above his knees. Another, Sharda Lall, related the waves were higher than her single-flat concrete house and hammered her roof.. “It was really bad [Monday]…. we didn’t know where was the trench and where was the dam – everything in one,” she recalled.

In Guyana, temperatures are expected to soar up between 1-4°C by the end of this century. Sea levels are predicted to jump, with more intense periods of rainfall and longer dry periods expected, coming with deadly implications for the 90 percent of our population living on the coast, where there is the seat of governance, and the agriculture, industrial and commercial sectors are concentrated.

Earlier this year, the University of California disclosed scientists found that the energy of ocean waves has been growing globally, identifying a direct association with ocean warming. The study published in Nature Communications explained that a range of long-term trends and projections carry the fingerprint of climate change, including rising sea levels and global temperatures, and declining sea ice. Analyses of the global marine climate have identified hikes in wind speeds and wave heights in localized areas of the ocean in the high latitudes of both hemispheres.

The new study focused on the energy contained in ocean waves, which is transmitted from the wind and transformed into wave motion. This metric, called wave power, has climbed in direct association with historical warming of the ocean surface, the online Science Daily (SD) news portal said. The upper ocean warming, measured as a rising trend in sea-surface temperatures, has influenced wind patterns globally, and this is making ocean waves stronger.

“For the first time, we have identified a global signal of the effect of global warming in wave climate. In fact, wave power has increased globally by 0.4 percent per year since 1948, and this increase is correlated with the increasing sea-surface temperatures, both globally and by ocean regions,” said lead author Borja G. Reguero, a researcher in the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Understanding how the energy of waves responds to oceanic warming has important implications for coastal communities, including anticipating impact on infrastructure, coastal cities, and small island states. Ocean waves determine where people build infrastructure, such as ports and harbors, or require protection through coastal defenses such as breakwaters and levees, SD said.

The effects of climate change will be particularly noticeable at the coast, where humans and oceans meet, according to coauthor Fernando J. Méndez, associate professor at Universidad de Cantabria. “Our results indicate that risk analysis neglecting the changes in wave power and having sea level rise as the only driver may underestimate the consequences of climate change and result in insufficient or maladaptation,” he pointed out.

On Tuesday, Nature Communications revealed three times as many people could be affected by rising seas than previously thought. New models show that 300 million are currently living on land, including in Guyana, that will flood at least once a year by 2050. This eclipses a former estimate from NASA, which projected 80 million people were at risk. A revamped model, using satellite readings and artificial intelligence, forecasts that swathes of countries like ours, Vietnam and India will be under water by mid-century.

Outside of Asia and excluding the Netherlands, where an extensive flood control network is not captured by any of the elevation models examined, the assessment indicates 20 other countries are expected to see land currently home to 10% or more of their total populations fall below end-of-century high tide lines. Except for Djibouti, Guyana, and the United Arab Emirates, all of these are island nations, and 13 are classified by the United Nations as Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

ID hears the 1951 warning of the country’s greatest poet, Martin Carter, “This is no magnificent province/No El Dorado for me/No streets paved with gold/But a bruising and battering for self preservation/In the white dust and the grey mud.”