Roads and some expensive homes have already been destroyed. Two years ago, one the city's best known beach restaurants, 'the sailing ship', was engulfed. The city centre, currently two kilometres from the coast, is already showing signs of coastal erosion, with walls cracking and potholes forming in the roads.
Despite the steady inundation, there are no accurate estimates of the rate at which Beira, built on a coastal swamp, is being inundated. A recent Dutch study included Beira as one of the ten cities in the world most threatened by sea level rise. The erosion has probably been heightened by the recent removal of protective mangrove forests and poor maintenance work on the sea walls.
("Beira gradually sinking," IPS, 22 October 1993).
GREENPEACE Climate Impacts Database