Rising sea levels due to global warming could be a sinking prospect for owners of beachfront property. Spain’s shoreline is expected to creep inland by between 20 and 70 metres by the year 2050, according to Arturo Gonzalo Aizpiri, the Spanish Environment Ministry’s secretary general for Pollution Prevention and Climatic Change. Sr Aizpiri’s comments came at a seminar on climate change held in the northern Spanish city of San Sebastián, whose spectacular crescent-shaped La Concha is one of Spain’s most famous city-front beaches. Experts at the seminar, including Cantabria University Professor Raúl Medina Santamaría, explained that the sea level is currently rising at rate of four millimetres a year. By mid-century, the increased water levels, along with 20 to 50 per cent larger waves, will gobble up swaths of beach and seafront land, taking the sea 20 to 70 metres inland from the current shoreline, they said. The rising tide would mean the disappearance of such coastal features as the Ebro River delta, the Doñana wetlands or La Manga on Murcia’s Costa Cálida, according to the experts. It would see the conversion of some land that is currently choice beachfront property into worthless seabed. There was general consensus at the seminar that climate change cannot be halted, but, in the words of Sr Aizpiri, “we can buy some time, reducing the pace of global warming.” He highlighted the importance of pinpointing the exact impact of different industrial and commercial activities and finding ways to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, coastal towns should be taking into account the reality of rising shorelines in their town planning practices, said Professor Medina. Among other things, he said, they should be taking measures such as providing economic incentives for the sale of at-risk shorefront land so that it can be “returned to the sea.”