"We're going to have areas that are uninhabitable": How Wellington Shire is preparing for rising sea levels

There are many low-lying coastal communities in Wellington Shire like Loch Sport, Paradise Beach and the Honeysuckles – and they’re all concerned the encroaching sea might make their homes worthless.

What happened: Wellington Shire is set to pursue an overhaul of its flood overlays after councillors voted unanimously to better inspect the region’s rivers and coastline.

• The council says the changes aim to simplify building approvals for low-risk homes while tightening rules for works in flood-prone areas.

What they said: University of Melbourne coastal geomorphologist, Professor David Kennedy, has spent 20 years researching how climate change and sea level rise are impacting coastal areas.

Kennedy told the Monitor there will be areas along Australia’s coast that, in 50-100 years time, will be entirely uninhabitable. 

He said state and local governments need to continually update their planning schemes when it comes to flooding and sea-level rise because scientists are always getting a clearer picture of how the climate is changing.

• “We're reaping the bad decisions of the past in terms of planning where we put people into hazardous zones,” said Kennedy.

Why is this happening? Sea levels around the globe are rising as warming oceans expand and ice sheets melt. This is a consequence of a growing concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.

Around Australia’s southeast coastline, the rate has been much higher than the global average since 1993, according to research from the CSIRO.

How high will the oceans rise? In Victoria, local councils are required to update flood mapping to incorporate sea-level rise caused by climate change up to 2100.

• The Victorian government currently plans for sea level rise of “not less than 0.8 metres by 2100”, but other state projections indicate there could be a rise of 1.2-1.4 metres.

Kennedy said he thought 0.8 metres was a conservative estimate for the height of sea level rise Australia would experience and 1.2 metres was more likely.

Councillor Liz Foat told a council meeting in March new rules required it to keep up-to-date flood maps “including sea level rises”.

• “The updated flood maps better show where river and coastal flooding, as well as where water inundation, could happen”, said Foat.

Pick and choose: Kennedy said governments are going to have to make tough decisions in the future about which communities they choose to protect with seawalls and which communities they offer property buybacks to.

• “In some areas we're going to have to let it go back to nature,” Kennedy said. “People will be affected. It's people's superannuation, holiday houses [or their] only house. But the sea level is rising, the climate is warming, so all we're doing [by updating maps] is putting it off.”

Lakes Entrance was one example Kennedy gave of a populated and built up area that needs to be protected with seawalls.

“But if we prioritise development in one area, we then have to progressively decrease our [development] in other spots.”

Big money, more to lose: Loch Sport and Seaspray are both areas where a lot of people have invested in property that is located in the current tidal zone.

“They shouldn't have been able to buy in the first place,” said Kennedy. “We need to think of it beforehand. At the moment, we've been passing the buck down to the grandchildren and the great grandchildren.”