Climate Change as it Relates to Flooding in Houston and Lekki (Eko Atlantic’s Effect)
Climate Change as it Relates to Flooding in Houston and Lekki (Eko Atlantic’s Effect)
Climate change has resulted in extreme weather conditions from extreme winter, to extreme dry weather leading to drought in Africa, to extreme storms and hurricanes in North America. But what are we doing to adapt to this inevitable Climate change condition we are experiencing?
Let’s take flooding in Houston as a case study. Scientist Mathew Cappucci on NPR tried to help the public visualize the quantity of water that was contained in Houston at that point and he said “If you took the Empire State Building, more than a hundred stories tall, you could fill that entire volume 33,000 times with the water that fell on Houston and the surrounding areas. That shows you how much there was.”
Why do you think such an amount of water would be retained in Houston in the first place? Yes, there would be storm, but water always finds its way. So, the only reason it would be retained in a space is either its pathway has been blocked, or its in the area where it is meant to be in the first place. A recent one from the Atlantic is titled, “Houston’s Flood is a Design Problem.” The subheading gives a clue to a solution. It says, “It’s not because the water comes in. It’s because it is forced to leave again.” This statement takes me back to my home country Nigeria. In the city of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous city, a lot of land is being reclaimed from the ocean by sand filling. Presently, there is a major real estate project going on along the coastal area of Lagos called “Eko Atlantic.”
In an article released by the guardian titled “New Privatized City Heralds Climate Apartheid”, it says: “Welcome to Eko Atlantic, a city whose “whole purpose”, its developers say, is to “arrest the ocean’s encroachment.” Like many low-lying coastal African countries, Nigeria has been hit hard by a rising sea-level, which has regularly washed away thousands of peoples’ homes. To defend against the coastal erosion and flooding, the city is being surrounded by the “Great Wall of Lagos”, a sea defence barrier made of 100,000 five-ton concrete blocks. Eko Atlantic will be a “sustainable city, clean and energy efficient with minimal carbon emissions,” offer jobs, prosperity and new land for Nigerians, and serve as a bulwark in the fight against the impacts of climate change.
Would Eko Atlantic really become a sustainable city? Growing up, this area was a beach called the bar beach where friends and family go to relax, but it has now been covered by urbanization and the once lovely beach we had, has been destroyed. Is this really a way to help mitigate climate change- pushing out the water from where it naturally exists? I don’t think so.
Climate change does not just make storms worse; it makes them also less predictable. The Lagos Island area is a flood plain area. In July, 2017, there was a heavy down pour of rain that led to a huge flood in the Lekki area of Lagos. The water was retained because the the natural pathway through which it is meant to flow or get absorbed had been blocked by disruptive real estate development. As more lands are being reclaimed from water bodies, this problem can only get worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP5L9oy-hfw
https://www.channelstv.com/2017/07/08/lagosians-lament-as-flood-hits-lekki-victoria-island/
Outside the walls of Eko Atlantic is Lekki and Victoria Island, the flood prone areas in Lagos. With the amount of money being spent on the construction of Eko Atlantic, it is almost certain that the city would be free from the effect of climate change like flooding because it has been filled up to a land higher than every other part outside its walls. But the question now is “What happens to the surrounding environs such as Lekki, Victoria Island and Ajah? These areas are severely prone to flooding, and already suffered from massive floods in 2017 that displaced individuals from their household. And now, a part of the ocean has been blocked with a massive real estate construction taking place. Climate change is driving more extreme weather condition and therefore we cannot predict when next a massive storm would hit Lagos. So what would happen to the cities outside the wall of Eko Atlantic when this storm eventually comes? Sustainable Development is development that meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own need. Therefore, any development that puts its surrounding environment in more danger, cannot be termed Sustainable.
So instead of spending a lot of money to relieve areas of storm, we should not build in flood prone areas in the first place, even in areas that have not experienced flood not just in a 100 years but even in 500 years. The leaders of countries should sign executive orders just like President Obama did in his regime that climate change be taken into consideration before executing any construction project. Now, climate change is a global problem and therefore cannot be looked at just in one part. The systems thinking approach should be utilized when analyzing such projects as the interaction between various parts are studied to understand the effect as a whole. In the case of Eko Atlantic, the effect of that project on the surrounding environment in Lagos State, Nigeria should be studied in order to proffer long lasting sustainable solutions.
“The reason cities flood isn’t because the water comes in, not exactly. It’s because the pavement of civilization forces the water to get back out again.” Dr Thomas Culhane says: “There are different kinds of floods. There’s the storm surge from hurricanes, the runoff from snowmelt, the inundation of riverbanks. But all these examples cast flooding as an occasional foe out to damage human civilization. In truth, flooding happens constantly, in small and large quantities, every time precipitation falls to earth. People just don’t tend to notice it until it reaches the proportions of disaster. Under normal circumstances, rain or snowfall soaks back into the earth after falling. It gets absorbed by grasslands, by parks, by residential lawns; by anywhere the soil is exposed. Two factors can impede that absorption. One is large quantities of rain in a short period of time. The ground becomes inundated, and the water spreads out in accordance with the topography. The second is covering over the ground so it cannot soak up water in the first place. And that’s exactly what cities do—they transform the land into developed civilization. Roads, parking lots, sidewalks, and other pavements, along with asphalt, concrete, brick, stone, and other building materials, combine to create impervious surfaces that resist the natural absorption of water.”
We can insist on permeable paving that recharges our aquifers or we can insist on no paving at all, populating our landscapes with water loving, water hungry lush plants — preferably ones that can make us food independent too. With all so called “wastes” safely in biodigesters and recycling industrial ecology systems, so that nothing can wash into our streets and drains and rivers and oceans when the storms come, and our houses and businesses and communities built to take advantage of and be comfortable with the consequences of climate change we can say, hopefully sooner rather than later, when it comes to big rains, “bring it on”. Let’s get ready.
What is your opinion on flooding as it relates to climate change? What better way can the Oceans Encroachment in Lagos be solved rather than putting more residents to the danger of flooding? Please do leave your comment below.
