The Ivorian resort where the ocean washes away livelihoods

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Transcript

00:00 Every week, Habib Hassan Nasser has to defend his beachfront hotel in Ivory Coast against

00:06 an attacker that threatens to destroy his livelihood.

00:12 His assailant is the rising sea that is eroding this coastal resort.

00:18 "If I hadn't made this protection, I can assure you that -- you see there, the two

00:25 coconut trees with the statue in red next to the little boy -- the sea would be beyond

00:32 that.

00:33 So that means that everything here would be washed away by the waves.

00:38 Which means that I would have nothing, no space, no swimming pool.

00:41 The hotel would be closed."

00:43 Nasser says that when he first came to Assini as a child, it would take five minutes to

00:50 walk to the shoreline.

00:52 Now he has to spend around $1,640 a week to buy truckloads of sand and hire workers to

00:59 pour it into bags and shore up the hotel's defences.

01:05 Ivory Coast's National Coastal Environment Management Program says the national coastal

01:09 erosion rate averages between 0.5 and 3 metres a year.

01:14 Assini, it says, is of particular concern.

01:17 It's due to the high rate of beach loss and its importance through tourism as an economic

01:22 hub.

01:25 Nasser says at this time of year the sand should be returning to the beach, but that

01:29 it hasn't yet happened.

01:31 "So we're behind schedule, but the longer we delay, the more the sea will attack us

01:38 and we'll have to fight back.

01:40 But at some point we won't be able to.

01:43 It's the ocean.

01:44 Either we put in the resources we don't have or we'll have to put up with it."

01:50 The problem is not unique to Ivory Coast.

01:53 UN climate experts have warned that, without adaptation, damages from sea level rise could

01:58 cost 12 large coastal cities in Africa up to $86.5 billion by 2050.

02:06 Further afield, Hawaii's highest court ruled at the end of October that a lawsuit by Honolulu

02:11 against fossil fuel companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell could go ahead to trial.

02:18 It accuses them of deceiving the public about climate change and cited damages from issues

02:22 such as sea level rise.

02:27 Assini's vulnerability was underscored in August.

02:31 A series of oversized waves pummeled the shore, striking higher than ever before.

02:38 Thanks to his sandbags, Nasa's hotel remained intact.

02:42 But others were not as lucky.

02:46 Standing in the ruins of his home, 60-year-old Alex Messankwasi says the sea has taken everything

02:52 away.

02:53 And he asks, "What am I going to do now?"

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