{"id":619523,"date":"2026-09-09T17:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T17:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/619523\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T17:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T17:42:10","slug":"peters-farm-is-on-flood-country-as-australias-sea-levels-rise-safe-land-is-vanishing-and-costs-are-huge-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/619523\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter\u2019s farm is on \u2018flood country\u2019. As Australia\u2019s sea levels rise, safe land is vanishing and costs are huge | Climate crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

When grazier Peter Lake moved to the Clarence Valley in the New South Wales<\/a> northern rivers region in 2007, he knew was \u201cbuying in flood country with \u2026 eyes open\u201d.<\/p>\n

His cattle farm, about halfway between Yamba and Grafton, borders the Coldstream River and has flooded five times since 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut of 130 acres \u2026 in a major flood we would have maybe 15 acres that were flood-free,\u201d he said. Lake has systems in place to prepare for such events, including moving cattle to the dry paddocks, where they would also store fodder to feed the animals.<\/p>\n

But the amount of safe ground is shrinking: in the historically big flood in 2022, \u201cwe only had just a few acres of flood-free land\u201d. Because of both drought and frequent floods, \u201cwe just haven\u2019t been able to successfully grow a fodder crop for some years\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re going to have more frequent and more severe major events \u2026 we need to change the way we think about how we manage,\u201d Lake said. \u201cIf rising sea levels impact on us, it\u2019ll just this make property less and less viable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grazier Peter Lake on his Clarence Valley cattle farm. Photograph: Peter Lake<\/p>\n

Agricultural damages are among $855.1bn in economic losses projected Australia-wide by the end of the century due to coastal flooding, according to a Climate Council report released on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The report forecasts that more than 267,000 coastal properties and 2m hectares (4.9m acres) of Australian land will be damaged by flooding by 2100 as sea levels rise.<\/p>\n

Queensland (93,157 properties), NSW (71,210) and Western Australia (51,366) are the three states with the greatest number of homes at risk.<\/p>\n

The Gold Coast, Brisbane and Melbourne are the metropolitan areas expected to be worst affected.<\/p>\n

Coastal areas around Brisbane and the Gold Coast are at significant risk, the Climate Council says. Illustration: Climate Council<\/p>\n

The Gold Coast, the country\u2019s most exposed urban area, faces $84.4bn in projected economic losses, while in Melbourne, losses are concentrated in low-lying areas around Port Phillip Bay and the Yarra River.<\/p>\n

The Climate Council report is based on mapping coastal flooding by 2100, taking into account both sea level rise and storm surges under the climate scenario known as RCP4.5 \u2013 which projects a 2.7C increase in global temperature by the end of the century, similar to expected heating based on current policies worldwide.<\/p>\n

Coastal areas around Port Phillip Bay are vulnerable to rising seas. Illustration: Climate Council<\/p>\n

It was co-authored by Prof Tom Kompas at the University of Melbourne, whose modelling of the economic impacts was also published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports<\/a> and drew upon localised projections at 239 hotspots around Australia.<\/p>\n

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Kompas said the costs \u2013 an estimated $274.3bn in property losses and $580.7bn in land use damages \u2013 were a conservative estimate, and did not take into account the additional impacts of coastal erosion or significant ice sheet melt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said due to the scale of agricultural losses, there was a food security issue potentially coming as well: damage is projected to affect 619,713 hectares (1.5m acres) of farming land.<\/p>\n

A map showing coastal areas at risk in NSW and the projected economic damage. Illustration: Climate Council<\/p>\n

Sea levels have risen, on average by more than 22cm globally<\/a> since 1900, with human-caused global heating the dominant cause of the rise since 1970. An additional 14cm rise is expected in Australia by 2050, increasing the frequency of permanent inundation and tidal flooding.<\/p>\n

Kompas said that while reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit global heating was of paramount importance, \u201cwe have to start planning and responding and adapting now\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nice thing about the work is it shows where the hotspots are and what \u2026 assets will be impacted. So we can start to plan for how to deal with that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing, of course, is not to build on flood plains, which is common still.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When grazier Peter Lake moved to the Clarence Valley in the New South Wales northern rivers region in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-619523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}