New Orleans is locked into a watery future which could see it surrounded by ocean as early as this century, according to a new expertanalysis, which says the city must start the relocation process now to avoid chaos.
The paper’s conclusions are stark, but it’s no secret that New Orleans is highly vulnerable to rising seas as the planet warms. Coastal Louisiana is one of the lowest lying regions in the world, and New Orleans, a city of 360,000 people, is particularly exposed. It sits in a bowl-shaped basin, mostly below sea level, in the middle of a rapidly shrinking delta.
The city is almost entirely surrounded by wetlands, which act as a buffer against hurricanes and storm surges. These are fast disappearing, however, as humans drain them for development, dredge canals in them for the oil and gas industry and construct river levees, depriving them of the sediments that stop them being submerged. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost around 2,000 square miles of wetlands…