Vanishing coast

PHOTO ESSAY
A young girl stands sentinel over her father’s fishing boat as it works the shoreline along a stretch of Ghana’s rapidly eroding Cape Coast. With the land being washed away from under their feet, many of the villages that line West Africa’s shores know their whole way of life is threatened. The steady destruction of the land is partly caused by the harsher storms and rising sea levels that come with climate change, but the damming of rivers is also to blame. The Akosombo Dam on the Volta River is a prime example. Opened in 1965 its hydro power plant provides over 70% of Ghana’s electricity, but at the same time it disrupts the natural flow of sediments from the north. No longer are sediments transported south by the rivers, leaving the shoreline with no means of replenishment to counter the Atlantic Ocean’s constant feasting upon it. The result is massive coastal erosion

..

..

..

..

..

..

..

..

..

..

..

..

..

..

..

..

TEXT AND PHOTO — Lars Just