For thousands of French people, the time has come to ask the right questions. Indeed, in a large city in France (and not only that), the future will confront them with drastic choices. We explain why.
It is a growing threat that already affects millions of people around the world. The acceleration of global warming is inevitably causing sea and ocean levels to rise, and has been doing so for several years now. And this has consequences on the lives of people who then have to make choices…
First of all, what causes the water to rise? Firstly, it is thermal expansion, namely the warming of the water, which causes their level to rise. And to this we must add the melting of the ice, just as worrying for our coasts. A real daily challenge for the authorities and public authorities who are trying as best they can to find lasting solutions. Certain cities in foreign countries have already thought about the future. This is particularly the case in Italy where the city of Venice imagined the Moïse project, a dike which protects the Serenissima whenever the waters rise or other floods.
As you will have understood, the rise in sea levels in the four corners of the globe is already taken very seriously and not only by convinced environmentalists. And the climate emergency is one of the concerns of many citizens. But that doesn’t stop reality from catching up with us. According to a study published at the end of 2023 in the journal Environmental Research LettersFrance is considered to be the third country most affected by rising waters after Italy and Egypt.
Even more worrying, in this same study, the city of Marseille and the Camargue region are cited as places where the soil is weakening considerably and which could, ultimately, disappear under the waters. “In Marseille, it (rising water levels, editor’s note) first threatens the beaches and the Old Port.explained Philippe Rossello, the coordinator of Greek-Sud (local branch of the IPCC), to the newspaper Provence following the publication of the said study. And for him to specify: “The sea rose by 20 centimeters in the 20th century, it will rise by another 25 centimeters by 2050. We will be more than a meter in 2100, whatever the scenarios”.
Experts have also calculated that the Old Port of Marseille would completely disappear underwater if the sea level rose by 5 meters. Then would come the tour of the entire Phocaean city (we are talking about a city populated to date by almost 900,000 inhabitants, who must therefore ask themselves whether to consider selling or not before their heirs find themselves one day at the foot of of the wall) then from the West coast. Other highly populated cities are also affected, such as Bordeaux and La Rochelle.
