shoreline changes in Ghana video transcript

Dr Sian Davies-Vollum, Head of School of Environmental Sciences: When I started researching on this project in Ghana I was really interested in sea level rise and how that impacted the coastline.

It was very much focused on the physical landscape, the natural landscape, as that's my area of expertise, I'm a Geologist and Physical Geographer.

My colleague Deb Raha is a Human Geographer and Development Geographer and she encouraged me to think about the human aspect to this project.

So that's how its evolved and developed.

Dr Deb Raha: My analysis focused more on the human side of things and the implications of climate change on these coastal communities, at present and what will happen in the future.

Sian: People in less economically developed countries, who live at the coastline, are really dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods.

They fish, they use wood, they might be small-scale farmers.

So any changes to rainfall, to sea level rise, to flood patterns, has a big impact on them.

So they are the coastal communities that are most at risk from climate change.

Deb: The long term goal for this research is going to be threefold.

One is to have research-informed policy recommendations that the local government as well as the national government can implement.

Second element would be for the academic audience to have more publications, to have research-informed teaching in the classroom as well.

And I think the third and the most important element of future research would be to help local communities adapt their strategies, to give them more alternative methods that they can implement for protecting the environment and having stable livelihood.

Sian: One of the things that I've noticed in five years that I've been visiting this coastal community in Ghana, is the increased prevalence of plastics along the beach and the coastline and the lagoon.

There's plastics that's in the near shore and shallow water. It just brings that along with the fish catch and then that's left on the beach.

So there's a huge issue with plastic pollution on the beaches there.

Deb: And as of now, they don't have any system, management system, of what to do with the plastics.

So it's just left on the beach and nobody's really doing anything about it.

So that's one thing we said would be top priority to deal with, as we go along in the project.

Shoreline changes in Ghana video

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