The rise in sea level sometimes "bites" the coast so persistently that it leaves no physical space for human settlements. This is what is happening to the small Thai coastal town of Ban Khun Samut Chin, located less than 10 kilometers from Bangkok, which is being besieged and buried by rising waters. The landscape of this place has changed so much in recent years that the image that best portrays it is now its school, surrounded by water and linked to the coast by a long, narrow walkway.
At school, every morning, four students stand with their bare feet singing the Thai national anthem, while the country's flag is hoisted in front of the building, a construction built on concrete stilts lapping by waves that have already forced to evacuate the place twice.
Here the primary school students of the town learn, where barely 200 people remain after the siege of the sea has caused a true diaspora. The school surrounded by water is for many the future image that could be repeated as an example of the social and ecological impacts that climate change can cause in coastal communities in many other parts of the world as sea levels rise.
The children express their nostalgia when they remember that a few years ago there were more than twenty comrades in the classrooms. "I feel a bit lonely and I would like new students to enroll," says Jiranan Chorsakul, 11, in statements collected by France Press. The retreat on this coast has been between 1.1 km and 2 km since the 1950s,
Formerly, between the school (which is also a Buddhist temple) and the town there was a mangrove forest that connected both places. But the locals have been moving more and more inland and as traces of the old coastal settlement there are now the old electric poles covered by water.
“I was born here, I can see the changes that are happening,” says the village head, Wisanu Kengsamat. The population has been cut in half; before there were about 100 homes, while now there are 80. Some families have lost their house due to marine erosion, so they do not have a space to live. If people find work elsewhere, they leave. And those who stay are looking for land in safer areas.
But in addition to climate change, other environmental factors affect the erosion suffered by this Thai town. The dense mangroves, which served as natural protection, have been destroyed to make way for shrimp farms. And, furthermore, the dams located upstream of the Chao Phraya, the river that runs through Bangkok and empties near the town, have slowed down and retained the contributions of sand and sediment that the river used to carry and reach the bay.
The rise in sea level has accelerated on the planet since the nineties of the last century and has been around 8 centimeters in the last 25 years. However, that rate reached an average of 3.7 millimeters per year between 2006 and 2018, according to the latest report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (August 2021). The melting of the mountain glaciers (Arctic, Himalayas, Alps...), the thermal expansion of the water and the loss of frozen masses in Greenland and Antarctica are some of the reasons for the rise of the sea. But the extraction of water from the aquifers that goes to the sea also has an influence, as researchers such as John Church, from the University of New South Wales (Australia), recently explained to this newspaper.
And if the warming trend continues, the oceans could rise by one meter around the Pacific Islands and the Indian Ocean by the end of the century.
That is why, for many experts, Ban Khun Samut Chin serves as a warning of what a climate-altered world would look like: a stark microcosm of the risk posed to us by rising sea levels, especially in developing countries.
In an attempt to adapt, bamboo pillars have been installed and efforts have been made to restore the mangrove as a defense against waves. But local voices indicate that these measures may be insufficient and in the end the town could disappear. The population considers moving further inland after feeling neglected by the Government.
The town trusts in the development of ecotourism, as it offers accommodation in family homes in the hope of raising public awareness about their situation. At school, students receive climate crisis classes, study ecology and learn to identify plants and animals. Some students say that when they grow up they want to teach the history of this school. If it still exists.
