Rising sea buries village in Ghana

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1466512

The old shore road to Totope is now under the sea. Developers began carving out another road, but it was washed away so often they abandoned it. Now the road to this village is just a track across the sand.

On this southern coast of Ghana, the Atlantic Ocean is rising. Every few years, residents of a string of villages leave their homes and build new ones farther back, abandoning them to the encroaching sand and water.

But Totope has no place left to run. It is squeezed between the ocean and the Songho Lagoon, and the villagers say that in a few years they will have to go.

"When I was young, you had to climb a coconut tree to see the sea," said Alex Horgah, a 57-year-old fisherman, sitting under a thatch shelter. The old men of the village say every year the shore advances a few yards (meters).

No one knows why the sea has risen here so steadily over the decades, and no scientists have come to collect data.

But if predictions of the impact of climate change run true, this could be a preview for many coastal areas.

In Accra, Ghana's capital about 60 miles (100 kilometers) to the west, a weeklong 160-nation conference is meeting through Wednesday to work on a treaty to limit global warming and combat the consequences of climate change.

Negotiators have a deadline of December 2009 to complete one of the most complex and difficult international agreements in history. They need to map out ways to drastically reduce emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and devise a flow of hundreds of billions of dollars every year to help poor countries cope with changing weather.

Scientists say rising sea levels will be one of the most severe consequences of global warming, along with more drought and floods, the extinction of species of plants, animals and insects, and greater stress on water supplies for millions of people.

The world's oceans have been rising an average of 3 millimeters (0.12 inches) a year since 1993, according to a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, drawing on the work of some 2,000 scientists.

The panel warned that unless global warming is reined in, millions of seaside dwellers will experience flooding, up to one-third of coastal wetlands will be lost, and increasingly ferocious storms will batter the shores.

The disaster scenarios for the future are today's reality for the 1,000 people of Totope.

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A foretaste of what is to come if nothing of substance is done to curb GHG emissions in the next five to ten years.