Project focuses on climate-proofing residents’ livelihoods as erosion destroys scores of homes
Musa Bamba moved to West Point, a bustling slum on a peninsula jutting out from Liberia’s capital Monrovia, two decades ago. The 48-year-old scrap metal trader bought a plot of land and built a 10-room house, back from the water’s edge, for his family in 2005.
According to local officials, the district’s population has fallen from 85,000 less than a decade ago to just 50,000 now. Coastal erosion has eaten away almost 30m of shoreline over that time and destroyed the homes of more than 670 families, they estimate, as well as putting at risk critical fishery businesses.
The project will fund the construction of coastal defence structures, to begin in 2023. It builds on previous UNDP efforts, including a 600m revetment installed in Buchanan, a city to the south of Monrovia, at a cost of $2.9m. The construction in Monrovia of a port in 1948 and a dam in the 1960s have affected the water patterns and sediment movement along the coast, says John C L Mayson II, chief technical adviser of the Monrovia Metropolitan Climate Resilience Project Rising tides directly linked to climate change have over time increased the depth of a basin on the northern side of West Point, which has in turn drawn sediment from its beaches, accelerating erosion.
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