Coastal home owners face huge losses from rising sea

By Michael Perry

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australians Lesley and Doug McGrath have for decades battled ocean swells that have eaten away at the backyard of their multi-million dollar Sydney home.

They bought an old beach shack on Collaroy Beach in 1976 and replaced it with a two storey home anchored to the land by 12 meter (35 feet) long piers, a concrete slab, and an underground seawall of giant boulders.

Even with all that protection, the fury of the ocean has at times torn up their backyard, large chunks of prime real estate disappearing under waves. With scientists predicting a 90cm (3 feet) sea level rise in Sydney by 2050 due to climate change, the house itself may yet be in danger.

The McGrath home is one of an estimated 700,000 plus coastal properties in Australia alone that are threatened by rising seas.

Around the world, owners of prized seaside properties face the prospect of not just losing their homes but receiving no compensation as insurance policies may not cover climate change losses in the future.

"If you live in paradise you accept what the ocean gives and takes. We're not worried," Lesley McGrath told Reuters.

Her family photo album tells an amazing story of their battle against the ocean: At times, an expansive beach separates their home from the sea, and at other times, the surf is so close that photos show her son jumping into the water from the backyard.

Sea levels are widely expected to rise about one meter (3.3 feet) this century due to climate change, faster than the 18-59 cms (7-23 inches) outlined in a United Nations Climate Panel report in 2007.

And coastal communities around the world are already feeling the destructive effects of more frequent and violent ocean storms -- a portent of rising seas.

Powerful storms along China's coast are washing salt onto farmland, severely reducing crop yields and there are fears saltwater may be contaminating vital fresh water aquifers.

The first wave of climate change refugees have started leaving their island homes in the South Pacific as storm surges contaminate fresh water supplies and flood coastal crop lands.

"We have a feeling of anxiety, a feeling of uncertainty because we know that we will be losing our homes. It's our identity. It's our whole culture at stake," says Ursula Rakova, from Carteret Island off Bougainville in Papua New Guinea.

Carteret islanders have decided to abandon their island home for the nearby and bigger Bougainville island after years of worsening storm surges and king tides infected their fresh water supplies and ruined their staple banana and taro crops.

Other islanders tell stories of sitting and watching the ocean slowly devour their homes, and desperately trying to climate-proof their villages by constructing seawalls, planting mangroves to halt erosion and testing salt-resistant crops.

"We thought of ourselves as living on the coast. Now the house where I was born is a couple of hundred meters out to sea," says Kini Dunn from Togoru in Fiji.