Professor Kwasi Appeaning Addo, the Director of the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies, has urged the government to pay more attention to natural solutions to the problem of coastal erosion.
Speaking on The Point of View, he said the country needed a rethink of its strategy for combating coastal erosion.
“We have come to a point where we need to move away from the traditional way of managing coastal erosion to managing with nature; where we appreciate that this is a natural activity, and we have to identify that we have to manage it with a natural system.”
Prof. Addo is of the view that engineering solutions like sea walls only provide short term relief.
“What you have done is basically transfer the problem from one location to the other,” he explained.
“In your quest to control or fight erosion at a particular area using hard engineering approaches, you deprive some areas of sediments and that area will eventually be eroded.”
He maintained that sea walls have never been the best solution to tackling coastal erosion, and noted that hybrid solutions were also an option in addressing the problem.
“Areas where we identify vulnerabilities to be very high, we can do a combination with the hard [engineering solutions] and bring back the natural system so that the natural system can help introduce the natural dynamics so as to manage it effectively,” Prof Addo explained.
The post Consider natural solutions to coastal erosion – Researcher to gov’t appeared first on Citinewsroom - Comprehensive News in Ghana.
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