Book extract: Seascape: Notes from a changing coastline by Matthew Yeomans

We are pleased to bring you an extract from Matthew Yeomans’ Notes from a changing coastline, which considers the realities of climate change and how we will need to adapt where and how we live.

In some ways, Fairbourne resembles Tywyn in terms of its modern development. It was first developed in 1865 by the Cardiff bus and tram entrepreneur Solomon Andrews.

He purchased the land and built the first properties while also drawing on his transportation expertise to build a horse-drawn tramway that connected the nearest railway line to the coast.

The tram route is now the miniature railway that runs along the promenade. At the time, this land was still known by its Welsh name, Morfa Henddol (named after the two rivers that converge there). But in 1895 an English flour baron called Arthur McDougall bought up a chunk of the land, turned it into a seaside resort and renamed it Fairbourne.

Death sentence 

That’s where the similarity ends. While Tywyn’s defences are being bolstered, Fairbourne has been handed a death sentence.

In 2014, Gwynedd Council declared the town will no longer be habitable from 2054, because of a combination of sea level rise, severe storms caused by climate change and the geological conditions surrounding the village. Fairbourne faces a triple flooding threat from the sea, the Mawddach Estuary and the river run-off from the surrounding hills.

Back in 2017, Natural Resources Wales spent £6.8 million on nearly two miles of reinforced concrete sea defences to protect more than 400 properties. But defending Fairbourne will only get harder over time.

Hence the long-term decision to ‘walk away’, in the parlance of government.

The council has outlined a plan to essentially ‘decommission’ Fairbourne by tearing down homes, removing its roads and letting the sea turn the land back to salt marsh. Perhaps, at that point, it will revert to its original and accurate Welsh name.

The decision to abandon Fairbourne, to protect Tywyn, to double down on Cardiff – in fact every climate change protection decision in Wales – depends on a complicated set of financial, economic, commercial, management, social and environmental factors established by the Welsh government’s Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Programme.

It in turn is influenced by the UK Treasury’s Green Book – the government’s equally complicated bible for how to appraise policies, programmes and projects.

Flood protection

In its most simple explanation (if that is possible) the programme takes into account a series of critical success factors that have to be met in order for flood protection action to be taken. They include: the need for the proposed solution to complement local flood risk strategy; to offer value for money; to match the capabilities and capacity of the companies that would supply the services; to be able to be funded from available budget and, frankly, to be physically achievable and maintainable.

Based on these (and other business and governance criteria), decisions can be made about how to defend the coast from the sea. There are four options outlined for those decision makers.

The first is to ‘walk away’ – the fate facing Fairbourne. The second is ‘business as usual’, which means maintaining the current level of investment and support. The third offers a ‘minimum of two intermediate options’ to escalate coastal defences. The final is ‘do maximum’, which means to invest what is needed to protect local communities and businesses.

Local residents, not surprisingly, feel abandoned by the decision to walk away from Fairbourne. Some have campaigned for the government to take a second look at how the village could be saved, even suggesting the installation of 100 tetrapods, concrete structures that can reduce the force of incoming waves and are commonplace along the shores of Japan. Most of all though, the residents feel they have been forgotten.

Unprepared

Fairbourne might just be one small village of 1,200 people, and it may well be undefendable against the power of the sea. But it highlights how unprepared most of us are to acknowledge the reality of climate change relocations.

Where will the people of Fairbourne go? With thirty years warning, it’s likely that the abandonment of the village will happen gradually with families migrating into other local areas or venturing further afield. But other communities might not have so much time to adapt and relocate.

Wales, of course, is a bit part in the global climate migration story. But the very fact that thousands of Welsh people might have to move at short notice in the coming decades shows just how big a change society is about to experience as millions more people in climate vulnerable regions are displaced.

Many thousands of international climate refugees will keep seeking safe haven in the UK and the coming decades will bring far greater migration challenges than the ones we face today. It will demand a response from all of us that is far more sympathetic and accommodating than the current mood of so-called developed societies.

It will require an element of humility and a dose of historical education to demonstrate how open borders can build stronger, more successful and kinder societies – and have done in the past. The success of Uganda’s Asian population in the UK is just one example. If the fate of Fairbourne shows us anything, it is that we all now are vulnerable to the forces of climate change. And that we can take nothing for granted.

We walk to the seafront and then along the sea wall following the miniature train line. Some of the houses along Fairbourne front are neatly kept but others feel already abandoned.

Some empty lots are overgrown. In fact, the whole town has a sense of finality about it – surely not what Arthur McDougall would have imagined back at the start of the twentieth century.

It was his family that first created what we now know as self-raising flour.

If only he could have applied the same wizardry to Fairbourne.