Environment: could the Camargue disappear because of global warming?

In the Camargue, the man has builds dikes to protect themselves from nature. But the sea rises by almost 4 mm each year. Frédéric and his daughter are ranchers. Since 1950, their families have farmed these waterfront lands and seen the landscape change. “When we arrived, the sea was more than a kilometer from here“, says Frédéric Raynaud, manadier at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône). Almost every storm, sea water invades the lands of the Raynaud family. A makeshift dyke was therefore installed to attempt “to stop the sea”.

The dikes have made it possible to limit the damage, but climate change is reshuffling the cards. According to a diagnosis established by the teams of Thibaut Mallet, director of the Interregional Joint Syndicate for the Development of Dykes in the Rhone Delta, the sea level will rise from 40 to 70cm by 2100. Damage will also cost more. But that doesn’t worry Christelle Garlicmayor of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. “It lasts two, three days (the storms) but then the sun comes back and everything is fine“, she reassures. However, scientists agree that the Camargue is on borrowed time.