In Tanzania, the sea is moving inland – and taking livelihoods with it

Along the coast of Tanzania, in East Africa, the Indian Ocean is pushing saltwater ever farther inland, shrinking coconut harvests, driving fish away and leaving some residents wondering how much longer they can stay.Buga Steven can measure the advance of the sea in coconuts.There was a time when his trees yielded about 5,000 of them. Today, he said, a harvest brings less than a third of that.Diminishing returns“And they are much smaller than before,” said the Tanzanian farmer, who lives in Pangani, on the country’s northeastern coast, where the local river meets the Indian Ocean.There, seawater has pushed about eight kilometres inland along the Pangani river, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), carrying salt into fields that once sustained farmers along its banks.In places, mangroves are following the saltwater inland.For Mr. Steven, their arrival amounts to a boundary marker: land that once supported agriculture is becoming something else. His conclusion is stark.“Everyone living along the riverbanks where mangroves are growing should be given grants so they can move elsewhere,” he told UN News. “Those areas have already been taken over by mangroves.”A c...