Coastal erosion is caused by the action and impacts of wind and water which is usually caused by the waves and the current. This can either be a rapid onset or slow onset. Rapid onsets will usually happen over a period of days or weeks, an example of this is the 12 Apostles along The Great Ocean Road, it has been just over a millennia (100 decades) and 4 of the Apostles have collapsed and fallen into the water. Slow onsets will usually happen over a period of years and decades, and an example of this is along the New South Wales Coast there is constant erosion ever since 1857. Coastal erosion can happen anywhere at any time along coastal areas where the coastline gets destroyed by the wind and waves.
Coastal erosion is impacting the Australian coastline, this is mainly caused by the rising sea level and climate change. 50% of the Australian coastline is prone to change. 80% of the Australian population live near the coast which means that many properties can become damaged and some even inhabitable. In Sydney, NSW many houses nearly $4 million got damaged just before they went on auction, this was many because they were built only 10 steps away from the Pacific Ocean, and the houses have now become inhabitable. Coastal erosion is making big changes to the Australian coastline as sea levels mix with storm surges the cause of erosion starts to happen faster and more often. Australians need to start looking out for where they want to buy a house next as if they buy it too close to the water there may not be habitable within the next few years.
Coastal erosion is impacting Indonesia. Indonesia has more than 17,500 islands which means there is a total shoreline of approximately 80,000km. Coastal erosion has damaged many tourist infrastructures in Tegal Regency and has been since 1994. In Demak, coastal erosion has led to having to relocate the settlement and to lots of damage to the aquaculture because of this about 200 families have had to move and 3000000 meters squared of fishponds have sunk. In Semarang City, the past 100 years have been nonstop erosion which has threatened many facilities and caused extensive loss of coastal land. Coastal erosion is impacting Indonesia by taking away a lot of the land on which they grow food and in lots of places they go to catch fish.
The Australian Government is managing the issue of coastal erosion by starting a project called Coastal Compartments Project. Coastal Compartments Project puts all the beaches on the Australian map in 3 different sections. Firstly, the Primary level is based on the influence of large platforms such as ports which take regional planning. Secondly, the Secondary level is based on more medium landforms and focuses on more smaller engineering things with just local planning. Lastly, at the Tertiary level, the individual beaches only have small projects such as sea walls and groins. In Busselton, they have had to put big groins in the sand to stop the water from flowing up to the beach houses. The government is trying to stop the flow of water from getting up the sand and moving all the sediment as then the water can’t get to the houses.
The Indonesian Government is managing the issue of coastal erosion by constructing sea walls and sea dikes. A sea dike is basically like a ditch whereas a sea wall is a horizontal concrete slope that stops the waves from going up. In Java, they have decided that they will try and reclaim the eroded land by trapping the sediment using dams, this is because they want to get their mangroves recolonized to help protect the coastline against erosion. Indonesia is a very sustainable place as they rather do things with their hands instead of using machinery which means that a lot of workers would have lost their jobs when the fishponds in Demak sunk because of all the water.