In the early hours of 15 February 2019, the Atlantic Ocean came for Arowo Victoria\u2019s livelihood. The 60-year-old retired midwife was asleep when neighbours began banging on her door, shouting that the sea had started covering buildings along the nearby coastline.<\/p>\n
By the time she got to her small shop, she discovered that the Atlantic had already swept it away, destroying the business she had built with borrowed money after retirement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was nothing I could save,\u201d she says, staring at the shoreline where her shop once stood. \u201cThe sea took everything away.\u201d<\/p>\n
After retiring from decades of helping women give birth, Victoria had taken out a loan to start a business that she had hoped would see her through retirement. Instead, the sea has left her with mounting debts and no business to help her repay it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am paying for something that doesn\u2019t exist any more,\u201d she says. \u201cThey come to collect their money every month.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coastal changes have been rapidly worsening in Ayetoro, with many of the town\u2019s properties and outdoor spaces lost to the sea. Photograph: Dan Ikpoyi\/AP<\/p>\n
Ayetoro was once known as Nigeria\u2019s \u201cHappy City<\/a>\u201d after it was founded by a Christian group in the 1940s who wanted it to operate on the basis of a communist-style society. Now, the historic coastal settlement, located in Nigeria\u2019s south-western Ondo state, is gradually being eroded by tidal surges that people say have grown more severe over the past decade.<\/p>\n The Atlantic Ocean, according to people living there, has already swallowed more than half of the community, washing away hundreds of homes and other buildings, including schools and churches, over the past two decades.<\/p>\n While big cities such as Lagos<\/a> are often in the headlines as some of the world\u2019s most vulnerable coastal places, small settlements like Ayetoro are already vanishing. Those who live here can\u2019t rely on money for infrastructure such as sea walls \u2013 they simply rebuild each time they are flooded.<\/p>\n Emmanuel Aralu stands on a stilted wooden boardwalk that once marked the outskirts of Ayetoro and is now almost on the seafront. Photograph: Valentine Benjamin<\/p>\n \u201cMy uncle\u2019s house is very close to the water now,\u201d says 35-year-old Emmanuel Aralu. \u201cEach time the sea rises, it gets closer. We already know it may not survive another big tide.\u201d<\/p>\n As a child, Aralu remembers large stretches of empty land where children would play football. \u201cAll that space is gone now,\u201d he says. \u201cAt times, it feels like the entire community is being erased.\u201d<\/p>\n Motunrayo Asakasiki helps run her mother\u2019s shop on the swampy remains of Alaba Street. It is their second shop \u2013 the first was washed away. Photograph: Valentine Benjamin<\/p>\n Across the town, Motunrayo Asakasiki, 28, still remembers the day her mother lost her grocery store to floods driven by the encroaching sea. \u201cThe water came very fast,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople were screaming and trying to save what they could, but some things had already been washed away.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markYou cannot fight the sea. You just watch it take everythingLawrence Lemanu<\/p>\n After the destruction, the family moved the business to Alaba Street, which they considered safer. However, even there, the sea has continued to advance. \u201cThe ocean is still threatening this new place,\u201d she says. \u201cMy mother always wonders how many times she should start over.\u201d<\/p>\n Lawrence Lemanu at the palace of Oba Oluwambe Ojagbohunmi JP, the ogeloyinbo of Ayetoro, where he has taken shelter since losing his home in 2023. Photograph: Valentine Benjamin<\/p>\n The destruction has hit home hard for 79-year-old Lawrence Lemanu, who lost his 10-room house to the sea in 2023 after working on it all his life.<\/p>\n \u201cI raised my children there,\u201d he says. \u201cEverything I\u2019ve laboured for was inside.\u201d He describes watching helplessly as the waves ripped through the building. \u201cYou cannot fight the sea,\u201d he says. \u201cYou just watch it take everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Fishing, once the lifeblood of Ayetoro\u2019s economy, has become more dangerous and unpredictable. As local fisher Egba Taiwo puts it, the water no longer behaves as it used to.<\/p>\n \u201cNow the tides are very rough,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are times you fear going out fishing because the sea has become so dangerous.\u201d Even when fishers return safely, their hauls are smaller, he says.<\/p>\n The crisis is also threatening the buildings that house vital public institutions.<\/p>\n Townspeople protest in Ayetoro to demand action to save the town. Photograph: Olalekan Fagbenro \/ CAPPA<\/p>\n Hannah Olanrewaju, the officer in charge of the Ayetoro primary health centre (PHC), describes how dangerously close the sea has come to the facility.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you open the back door, you see the sea directly,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I came here in 2016, it was never like this. Now we struggle to carry out immunisation and malaria tests because it is so difficult to walk on the community\u2019s wooden bridges.\u201d<\/p>\n Health workers fear continued erosion may soon cut off the community\u2019s access to essential health services.<\/p>\n At Ayetoro College, school administrators say students and teachers work under the constant fear that the sea could one day submerge the entire building.<\/p>\n \u201cIt breaks my heart watching our young people trying to plan their future in a town that is steadily losing land to the sea,\u201d says Ogungbure Isaac, principal of Happy City College. \u201cThe situation is taking a psychological toll, which is affecting the children\u2019s academic performance due to the fear of the incursions.\u201d<\/p>\n Environmental experts say Ayetoro represents one of Nigeria\u2019s starkest examples of climate vulnerability. Dr Nnimmo Bassey of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation<\/a> describes the situation as a \u201cprofound injustice\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen global discussions on climate change are held, and people talk about loss and damage, there are communities that are already almost totally lost and damaged,\u201d he says. \u201cThe interests of communities like Ayetoro should be central to these discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n