Assessing the consequences of sealevel rise in th

Authors: Adrián PedrozoAcuña Richard Damania Miguel A LaverdeBarajas Daniel MiraSalama

Publish Date: 2015/04/26

Volume: 19, Issue: 2, Pages: 227-240

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Abstract

The Mexican State of Quintana Roo located in the Caribbean is an area of high environmental and socioeconomic value Its low elevation and long coastline render the State physically and economically highly vulnerable to accelerated sealevel rise The purpose of this study is to undertake an initial assessment of the potential land loss and costs that might eventuate by flooding due to sealevel rise SLR Given the spread of impacts caused by SLR a variety of measures are presented to capture these diverse effects A three pronged approach is adopted which combines areas affected by SLR with impacts identified in the population the economy and the environmental systems Tourism is the primary source of income and growth in the state of Quintana Roo consequently the economic impact of SLR is measured through the affect on different sectors of the economy which is exclusively conducted in the coastal zone while the environmental impact is approximated by the estimated loss of mangroves and the impact on population is proxied by means of the number of people that could be directly affected by flooding Based on current estimates of SLR we utilise a minimum inundation level of 1 m and a maximum inundation level of 5 m The inundation analysis is based on results from a Geographical Information System that identifies locations and the socioeconomic sectors that are most at risk from accelerated sealevel rise Given the uncertainty of projected future development paths conservative but plausible assumptions are used to provide a variety of estimates of the costs of SLR Our results show that for the most conservative scenario to 2100 at least 27  of mangroves in the State would be lost with an upper bound of 94  with an associated economic loss of 405325 million over one million people would be flooded and impacts on the economy would imply large losses over 400 million Less conservative more likely scenarios depict a greater nonlinear impact These provide first order estimates of the costs and consequences of inaction and the importance of preventive measuresWe are especially appreciative of Secretaría de Ecología y Medio Ambiente SEMA del Estado de Quintana Roo for generously providing geographical information with regards to infrastructure population hotels schools hospitals and mangrove We would like to specifically acknowledge José Roche Director of Climate Change at SEMA for his great help and interest in this project A PedrozoAcuña and M LaverdeBarajas acknowledge the financial support from CONACYT through grant SEPSEB 167003

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