The government has published the names of the French municipalities which will have the obligation to prepare for the erosion of the coast, aggravated by global warming and demographic pressure.
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The reports of the intergovernmental group of experts on the evolution of the climate have hammered it for years: the level of the seas is rising. An acceleration of the expansion of the ocean to which is added another reality, that of a population which massages more and more on the coasts.
Faced with this new equation, linked to global warming and demographic pressure, the government has published the names of the 126 French municipalities, which will have the obligation to adapt in priority to the erosion of the coast. The 2021 climate and resilience law provides for new provisions for the municipalities on the front line, faced with the decline in the coastline, which concerns about a fifth of the French coast (excluding Guyana), according to the national erosion indicator Coastal.
A list of new urban planning constraints that are not unanimous. “Before, people knew that the coast was moving, but we lost this collective memory on these risks, in particular because the inhabitants who live on the coast are no longer from there,” analyzes Yves Lebahy, professor of geography, Teacher at the maritime and coastal planning IUP, at the University of Brittany-Sud, interviewed by the telegram .
What are the municipalities concerned?
According to official figures, published on Saturday April 30 at Official Journal , 864 French municipalities are” more particularly vulnerable “to marine submersions. Temporary flooding phenomena of coastal areas, especially during storms, which will increase with the rise in sea level caused by global warming. Some 1.5 million inhabitants live in these coastal flood zones.
Within this list, which will be revised at least every nine years, 126 municipalities are considered priority, that is to say on the front line in the face of these risks of marine submersions. The majority of them are located on the Atlantic coasts and the English Channel: forty-one in Brittany, thirty-one in New Aquitaine and sixteen in Normandy. Overseas is also affected by the decree, the Antilles especially, with thirteen municipalities in Martinique, nine in Guadeloupe and three in Guyana. The most affected department is by far the Finistère, with twenty-three coastal municipalities concerned.