Tim Cocks and Loucoumane Coulibaly, Reuters 11 Jun 10;
GRAND-LAHOU, Ivory Coast, June 11 (Reuters) - When the ocean swallowed up their homes, it also divided the people of this sleepy Ivorian fishing village -- half of them moved inland, the other half stayed to brave the waves.
Picking through the decaying, algae-caked shell of a concrete house that was ruined years ago by the advancing Atlantic, fisherman Jack Baueur said he had no regrets.
"It would have been too hard to leave," he said. "We were born here. We don't want to start a life somewhere else. We're going to stay here until the sea floods us out."
In populated coastal West Africa, rising sea levels linked to the melting of the polar ice caps are conspiring with coastal erosion to slowly submerge communities.
Climate negotiators from around the world were winding up talks in Bonn, Germany, on Friday, to try to thrash out a new U.N. treaty on global warming and CO2 emissions, after failing to reach a binding deal in Copenhagen last year.
But it may be 2011 before any a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol emerges, despite pleas from poorer nations worst effected by climate change -- such as the small island states which see rising sea levels as an existential threat.
Coastal West Africans powerless to influence the horse trading in Bonn want urgent help to adapt to higher seas.
"The developed countries are at the root of this, so we can do nothing. I want them to come to our aid, because we are the people threatened, we are the ones suffering," said Baueur, as goats scavenged in the wreckage of a beach house completely levelled except for its cement staircase.
"THE SEA IS SWEEPING US AWAY"
The U.N.'s climate change panel predicts global warming will raise the sea by 18 to 59 cm (7 and 24 inches) this century, submerging low lying parts of coastal Africa, especially the densely populated major cities of West Africa, although the rate is disputed between scientists.
Africa has 320 coastal cities and 56 million people living in coastal zones less than 10 metres above sea level.
"The sea is sweeping us away," said Grand Lahou market trader Marie Ebesse, who has already had to move four times.
"We're crying for help. Someone has to rescue us."
But experts say the retreat of West Africa's coast is exacerbated by poor land management on the coast and badly planned buildings -- some think these are the lead cause.
"Yes, the melting glaciers are pushing up the seas, but for a us a far bigger concern is coastal erosion," said Marc Guinhouya, the chief pollution monitor of Togo, a tiny country with nearly half its population living on the coast.
"Every country (in West Africa) must try to construct barriers to protect its coast. We are using rocks and breakwaters and the effects are palpable. In places, the sea is pushed back over nearly 50 metres," he added.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is faced by West Africa's megacity of Lagos in Nigeria, where some 15 million people live on islands, along beaches and on the edge of lagoons.
The Lagos government has tried to reinforce sand banks that separate the mouth of the main lagoon from the Atlantic. They have also built new canals, dredged existing ones and fixed drains to ease flooding.
But analysts say poor urban planning in West Africa has left a huge amount of coastal property vulnerable -- sea walls meant to prevent erosion worsen it, as the waves crash on them, sucking the sand from all around them.
For many, there may be no choice but to move.
That doesn't please Vincent Aboya, whose beachfront walls on the Ivory Coast hotel he founded three decades ago are cracked and crumbling from the lashing of waves.
"I can't do this alone," he said. "We need the government help to construct defences against that sea." (Additional reporting by John Zodzi; writing by Tim Cocks; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
