As climate change hastens beach erosion, trucking or shipping huge quantities of sand to replenish beaches is likely to become economically untenable and logistically impractical.
While visiting the Indonesian island of Nias in 2017, I spent an afternoon on one of the more glorious beaches I've ever seen. It left such an impression on me that when I returned to the island — known occasionally by Westerners for its stupendous surf wave — years later, I made a point of revisiting it. This time, the size of the beach had shrunk, by my estimate, 60 percent. As I sat on what was left of it, I got a glimpse of why: Two young boys appeared with wheelbarrows, loaded them up with sand, then pushed them to the new resort going up behind us, the sand destined to be mixed into concrete. Here was a resort meant to take advantage of a beautiful beach, but instead destroying it by transferring its sand from the shore to its walls. I saw countless examples of sand's significance and its vulnerability over the next few years, which I spent researching my book, "The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit and Peril at the Beach." While some beaches, especially in developing countries like Indonesia, are mined for their sand, those that beach-loving vacationers flock to are continually washing away and being built back up with hauled-in sand, the costs and logistics of which grow more untenable every day. In a guest essay this week for Times Opinion, I argue that beach communities will soon have to make tough decisions about which shorelines to maintain. But the reckoning may come with a silver lining. In addition to sand mining, beaches are disappearing thanks to sea level rise, intense storms, parched rivers and sinking land. But they are also disappearing because we demand that they remain in one place. Take one look at sand — of course it's meant to move around. Left to their own devices, beaches will migrate, and they'll ebb and flow. But by and large they won't disappear. Like so many parts of travel in the 21st century, the old approaches to enjoying the beach are no longer working. For beach vacations of the future, we're better off accepting this reality and meeting the sand where it is.
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Saturday, July 20, 2024
Opinion Today: Why we should make peace with letting our shorelines wash away
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