CAEN: An ambitious housing project in the northwestern French city of Caen has run aground over worries that rising waters driven by climate change could make the area unlivable within the century.

Conceived in the early 2010s, the development was to transform a strip of industrial wasteland between the River Orne and the canal linking Caen to the sea into 2,300 homes, as well as tens of thousands of square metres of office space.

But the construction “will not happen”, said Thibaud Tiercelet, director general of the “Caen Peninsula” planning society in charge of the “Nouveau Bassin” (New Basin) project.

In 2023, just as all the authorisations to start work on the project had been obtained, Tiercelet was alerted by a group of experts tasked with determining the impact of climate change on the Normandy region. That group’s findings were stark enough to convince then-Caen mayor Joel Bruneau to sink the development.

“In 2017, the estimated rise in sea level was 20 centimetres (eight inches) by 2100,” Tiercelet recalled of the data. But “in 2020 it was 60 centimetres, and in 2023 it was one metre”.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects a “likely” sea level rise of 40 to 80 centimetres by 2100. But it also notes this estimate does not take into account poorly understood drivers that could push sea levels significantly higher, such as the rapid disintegration of the polar ice sheets.

In any case, the IPCC advises that urban planners in coastal cities “may wish to consider global-mean sea level rise above the assessed likely range”.

Published in Dawn, September 20th, 2024