Britain’s crumbling coastline

What's so radical about the options?
The idea that Britain should effectively admit defeat in its battle to preserve coastal defences and let the sea take over large areas of the country. The most startling expression of this, appearing in a leaked report from the environment quango, Natural England, relates to a sweep of the Norfolk coast between the seaside villages of Eccles and Winterton. The report considers four options for dealing with the rising sea, and concludes that the most cost-effective long-term solution would be to allow the nine miles of sea defences protecting this stretch of coast ("unsustainable" beyond the next 20 to 50 years, in the report's words) to collapse. If that happened the sea would move in and flood 25 square miles of Broadland to create a new estuarine bay. Two new "retreated" sea walls would then be erected further back from the original coastline as a new line of defence.

Who and what would be the casualty of such a plan?
An eighth of the Norfolk Broads national park (1.2% of the county) would effectively be wiped off the map, reverting to estuary and salt marsh. Six villages, 600 homes, five medieval churches, historic windmills, five freshwater lakes (including the popular Hickling Broad) and their fish stocks, about 2,500 acres of National Trust property, and much valuable farmland would all be inundated. A millennium of history would vanish under the sea: the village of Hickling, for example, is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Norfolk villagers, facing the prospect of becoming Britain's first climate change refugees, are up in arms.

But will the plan actually go ahead?
The minister in charge of flood defences, Phil Woolas, last week insisted there was "no question" of surrendering this part of the coastline; and the Environment Agency (EA) has pledged to "hold the line" in Norfolk for the next 50 years. But Woolas added that it was "simply not possible" to protect every part of Britain's coast at risk of erosion. "One can never talk about not abandoning areas if it's nature that's the problem."

And how is "nature" the problem?
In several ways, erosion being the most obvious: for centuries, East Anglia has been whittled away by the sea. The whole of southeast England is also affected by a tectonic tilt that began with the disappearance of the ice sheet that once covered the north of Britain. Removal of the weight of ice created a geological seesaw effect, so over the millennia the southeast has slowly tilted into the sea at a rate of 1.5cm a decade. And then there are the rising sea levels caused by global warming (2mm now, set to rise to 15mm by the end of the century).

How has that affected Norfolk?
At Happisburgh (pictured), on the same stretch of Norfolk coast, the sea has marched inland several hundred metres in just ten years. And the Norfolk Broads will soon go too, says Professor Brian Moss, an expert on the area. He thinks they'll be swamped within a few decades, and could even "go next winter". But this isn't a problem confined to Norfolk: large parts of the English shoreline between the Humber and the Solent are at risk.

So what's the Government's plan?
It is committed to a policy of "managed retreat": surrendering portions of the coastline to protect more populated areas. In the past, the policy was to build "hard defences" – concrete walls and shingle barriers. But these are costly and often just displace the problem down the coast: better barriers for the Hickling area could increase erosion at the equally vulnerable Great Yarmouth, home to 50,000 people. So now it prefers to rely on "soft defences": allowing large areas to revert to marsh and mudflat, thus absorbing huge amounts of water and breaking the power of incoming tides, waves and storms before they hit dry land. A classic example is Blackwater Estuary in Essex, an area where in 2002 holes were punched in a sea wall and 200 acres of farmland flooded. Today the area is a thriving salt marsh teeming with birds, and a breeding ground for herring, sole and sea bass.

Isn't that the sensible and cost-effective solution?
Maybe in the abstract, but not if you live in Hickling and your house will be abandoned to the waves. (You may not even get compensation: under a 1949 law, which ministers show no sign of wanting to repeal, the Government is absolved of all responsibility for homes lost to the sea.) The Dutch (see box) don't regard erosion by the incoming sea as an insuperable natural problem, say opponents of the Government's policy. It's just a question of political will. At present a mere £110m is to be spent over the next three years on coastal defences; the rest of the EA's £2.15bn budget will go on protecting populated inland areas from river floods. Yet the sums involved are relatively small: it would only cost £1.5m to £2m a year to protect the 25 square miles around Hickling.

What other areas might be abandoned to the waves?
"Some very diffi cult decisions will have to be made," warns the Environment Secretary Hilary Benn, though only a few plans have been mooted so far. A new strategy for the Humber Estuary envisages 1,500 acres of farmland reverting to wetland (along with 2,000 properties) in order to protect flood-prone Hull. The EA does not want to spend £18m over the next 50 years continuing to protect the idyllic Cuckmere Haven in East Sussex; it is consulting on a plan to allow the sea to flood the valley at high tide, threatening its picturesque coastguards' cottages. It also plans to stop maintaining flood defences along the Blyth river estuary in Suffolk. Locals say this will destroy 40 homes and hundreds of acres of agricultural land around the town of Southwold. At Cley in north Norfolk, a protective shingle bank is being allowed to fall into disrepair. ·