Managing risks to the economy on the coast

Jul 05, 2026 Features / Columnists, News

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Dr. Karen Abrams writes a weekly column on technology, education, and economics. She is the co-founder of STEMGuyana and the Pathway Online Academy.

(Kaieteur News) – Every conversation about Guyana’s economic future eventually arrives at a wall; a literal one, two hundred and eighty miles of seawall and sea defences holding the Atlantic away from a coastal plain that sits below the level of the ocean at high tide.

I want to write about that wall as an economic asset, because I do not think we talk about it that way nearly enough. Roughly 90 percent of our population lives on the coastal plain, much of it between half a metre and a full metre below sea level. About three quarters of our economic activity, agriculture, services, manufacturing, government and commerce, sits on the same strip. Which means the most important piece of economic infrastructure in Guyana is not a port, a highway or a power plant. It is the system of sea defences, kokers, drains, canals, conservancies and pumps that makes everything else possible.

Private sector bodies in Guyana should be keenly interested in this issue because every  business plan written in Georgetown, every farm on the coast, every housing scheme, hotel and mall rests on an assumption so basic we rarely state it; the assumption that the sea stays out and the water drains away.

History tells us what happens when that assumption fails. The floods of January and February 2005 caused approximately US$465 million in damage, equivalent to nearly 59 percent of Guyana’s GDP at the time, according to assessments by the Government of Guyana and the World Bank. More than half of an entire year’s national output disappeared in a matter of weeks because the country’s drainage systems could not move the water fast enough. The floods of 2021 again reminded us how vulnerable we remain.

And the pressure is rising rather than easing.

The science is sobering. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)  projects continued sea level rise throughout this century and beyond. Guyana’s low-lying coast is among the most vulnerable in the Caribbean and South America because so much of our population and economic activity sits below sea level and depends entirely on engineered protection systems.

But I want us to think beyond the projections and ask a harder question. What does a two-metre or three-metre rise in sea level eventually mean for Guyana?

We already know the answer in miniature.

Every year during spring / king tides and periods of heavy rainfall, sections of the East Coast highway are overtopped by seawater. Residents watch the Atlantic spill across roads and into communities. Traffic often comes to a standstill. Businesses manage the rising waters and families scramble to move vehicles and possessions to higher ground.  This happens with today’s sea levels. Now imagine the ocean standing another two metres higher than it does today.

At two metres, many of our existing sea defences would require substantial redesign or replacement. Drainage systems would struggle even more because the ocean into which we discharge water would be significantly higher. Saltwater intrusion into agricultural lands and freshwater systems would intensify. Insurance costs would increase and some assets could become prohibitively expensive to insure.

At three metres, we are no longer discussing periodic flooding or nuisance overtopping. We are discussing the possibility of a fundamentally different Guyana. We would be forced to consider the relocation of some communities, major transportation corridors, public buildings and critical infrastructure. The question would no longer be whether the sea occasionally comes in. The question would become whether significant portions of our present coastline remain economically and physically sustainable.

Consider what a single severe flood costs against what serious protection costs. Consider what flood risk does quietly every year to insurance availability, to lending decisions, to property values and to the willingness of investors to commit to thirty-year projects on the coast. Strengthened defences and modern drainage do not simply prevent disasters. They lower the risk premium on every other investment in the country. They are the foundation underneath the boom, and foundations are exactly what windfalls are for.

The financial world is also beginning to offer tools designed specifically for countries like ours. Climate-resilient debt clauses now allow some countries to temporarily suspend debt repayments after major natural disasters. Regional catastrophe insurance mechanisms such as the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility provide immediate liquidity after disasters strike. International adaptation financing, resilience bonds and conservation-linked financing are also becoming increasingly available.

These instruments allow Guyana to access financing to strengthen and raise sea defences, modernise drainage systems, install additional pumps, improve flood forecasting and early warning systems, and upgrade the infrastructure that protects homes and businesses. They can help ensure that when disasters occur, the government does not have to divert funds away from education, healthcare or social services to finance recovery. For ordinary citizens, these tools can mean fewer devastating floods, lower economic losses, greater security for homes and businesses and, ultimately, a more resilient future for their children.

When we invest in the wall, the drains, the pumps and the early warning systems, we are not only protecting GDP. We are protecting the bedroom of a child in Better Hope and the shop a family in Mahaica spent twenty years building.

This challenge is bigger than politics and bigger than any single jurisdiction. It requires collaboration between the Central Government, the Georgetown City Council and all of the local government organs along the coast to develop and implement a single, integrated plan for coastal resilience and drainage.

That plan should include modern flood modelling, a comprehensive assessment of sea defences and drainage infrastructure, investment priorities for vulnerable communities, coordinated maintenance schedules, emergency response protocols and long-term adaptation strategies. It should also be publicly available, regularly updated and subject to independent review.

This may become the most public and most valuable collaboration between central and local government in modern Guyana. The sea does not recognise municipal boundaries, political jurisdictions or party colours. Floodwaters do not stop at the edge of Georgetown or the limits of an NDC.

We are a people who have held back the ocean for more than three centuries with earth, stone and stubbornness. That inheritance bought us time. The oil window gives us, for the first time, the financial means to secure the coast properly for the century ahead.

Few line items in any budget will ever matter more. The sea is patient. Our advantage is that, for this one decade, we do not have to be.

 

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• economy, Managing risks, sea defences, seawall

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