One in ten Catalan beaches could have disappeared in 15 years

BarcelonaHow long can the Catalan coast ignore the already evident consequences of rising sea levels? The regression of the coastline is palpable and accelerating: since 2017, metropolitan beaches have experienced retreat rates ranging from 7.5 meters per year in Montgat to an average of nearly 10 meters per year lost in Badalona. And the situation is even more critical in places like the mouth of the Ebro Delta. 9% of the country's beaches could be "totally eroded" by 2035. And this is the optimistic scenario, according to scientists. Furthermore, nearly half are destined for width losses that will put at risk the tourist and leisure activities they currently allow. It is a "critical" situation, according to the diagnosis made in the extensive report A Coast on the Edge commissioned by the Advisory Council for Sustainable Development (CADS), dependent on the Generalitat.

The coast is experiencing the consequences of a dangerous cocktail concocted in recent decades in an area that represents 7% of the territory but where 43% of Catalonia's population lives. Urban pressure has transformed most of the coastline – housing, promenades, facilities, ports, and roads have been built – and all of this has changed the morphology of rivers and streams, cutting off the arrival of sediments they carried and which were used to feed the beaches. Now, with the added impact of the climate crisis, the sea is eating away at the maritime facade and storms (and floods) are becoming more recurrent. "We are witnessing a slow-motion tsunami," insists Carles Ibáñez, one of the study's coordinators and researcher and scientific director of the Eurecat climate resilience center. The report also proposes a series of solutions, starting with the creation of the Coastal Conservatory, which is intended to deploy an adaptation strategy that will be costly and long-term because it will affect the 70 coastal municipalities. "We have the diagnosis, and it is exhaustive; the time has come to act," urged the director of the CADS, Arnau Queralt.

The retreat of the deltas

To begin with, the bill for the regression that beaches are already suffering is growing and will become unsustainable: between 2002 and 2010, approximately 775,000 cubic meters of sand were added each year to the Catalan coast, mainly to the beaches in the Barcelona area. The economic, but also environmental, costs of these operations "are not viable," stresses Ibáñez. To guarantee sand on the beaches – 61% have lost their dunes – action must be taken further upstream, in the river courses and in the alterations of their morphology, which in recent years have interrupted the arrival of sediment to the coast.

This phenomenon, particularly aggravated in areas like the Ebro Delta, is what causes the coast at this point to have receded more than 10 meters per year at its mouth. In the Llobregat Delta, the retreat is almost a kilometer, according to the work of Juan Pablo Martín-Vide, professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

Today, only 20% of the coastline has enough space to retreat and avoid the effects of sea-level rise. "How long can we afford to react only to episodes?" asks Ibáñez in statements to ARA, when it has not been ten days since the images of floods in Montsià and still with the bill of 75 million euros left by Storm Gloria just over a year and a half ago. The report urges administrations to prepare and "rethink urban planning" taking this threat into account and warns that it is unviable to think that everything that is currently built can be protected. 60% of the country's maritime facade (80% if Cap de Creus and the Ebro Delta are not counted) is urbanized within the first 100 meters from the sea.

Buying land, relocating facilities

The heritage at risk, warns Ibáñez, is, initially, the beaches, but we also have to think about other constructions that will be affected by the rise of the sea and are in flood-prone or particularly vulnerable areas. The report points to the paradigmatic case of the R1 commuter train line in Maresme, which several reports propose be relocated in the future. "We are entering a period in which some infrastructures will become obsolete and we will have to think about where to build new ones, taking this reality into account," he insists. The most critical areas will have to be prioritized, opting for land purchases and the relocation of facilities to create adaptation spaces. This is precisely one of the priorities that the Coastal Conservatory must address, which should have already been created this summer and is still pending. "We cannot protect the entire coastline with breakwaters, which are very expensive and inefficient from an environmental point of view. We need adaptive urban planning like what France or the United Kingdom are already doing," corroborates Josep Aguirre, professor of administrative law at the University of Girona.

The scientists' diagnosis also forces a rethinking of future urban development plans, which propose the construction of 120,000 new homes and which the Generalitat now wants to review because it recognizes that a large part of the coastline "has exceeded its carrying capacity," explains Albert Alins, director of Mountain and Coastal Policies. This month, procedures must be initiated for a new urban development plan that will affect the entire coastal facade between Malgrat de Mar and Alcanar, following the steps of the one carried out on the Costa Brava, where 15,000 new homes were authorized out of the 31,000 potential ones foreseen by the different municipal plans. The report calls for the involvement of all administrations, including state and municipal governments, to review their plans and identify what is at risk – promenades, facilities, infrastructures... – in order to act.

The cost of adapting kilometers and kilometers of threatened coastline will be very high, and the same report makes proposals such as allocating part of the tourist tax revenue to the Conservatori del Llitoral (of the 19 million visitors who came to Catalonia in 2019, 90% stayed on the coast). It also proposes taxing all activities that make use of the coast or creating new taxes on second homes in these areas.