“The fight against nature is a fight you are not likely to win, and we are not there yet, but I think we need to re-strategize,” he said on Citi TV‘s The Point of View show.
Several coastal communities in Ghana have suffered devastating impacts from tidal waves that have been perennial.
The development has increased calls for the construction of sea defense walls along the affected coastal communities.
But according to Prof. Addo, the sea defense walls are not a permanent solution.
He argues that the walls will only “transfer” the problem to other coastal communities.
He said efforts must be made to manage the situation.
“We’ve come to a point where we need to move away from the traditional way of managing coastal erosion to managing nature where we appreciate that this is a natural activity… Sea walls are the hard engineering approach but using this approach gives you some relief in the very short term, but what you have done is transferring the problem from one location to the other,” he argued.
He added that the government must explore other solutions such as the planting of vegetation, and mangroves to manage the situation.
“We can’t engineer the entire coast, so we need to have a rethink. Sea defense has never been the best solution. It is one of the options, but since it [erosion] is a natural activity that has been augmented by human impact, we have to think of how to manage it, like growing the vegetation along the coast. Also, these mangroves are very important along the coast,” he added.
Prof. Appeaning Addo warned that urgent action must be taken by the government to address the situation as the sea level will continue to rise and eventually wash away the various communities including heritage sites such as the Osu Castle along Ghana’s coast.