How Could Rising Sea Levels Impact Businesses on Coastlines?

Rising sea levels stand to impact coastal businesses to a greater degree than other types of natural disasters like hurricanes. In spite of this, the gravity of the effects of global warming are still not as deeply felt in some coastal communities as they should be. However, some industries are trying to address this problem, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

The Situation

Despite solid scientific evidence of rising sea levels, many people remain unconvinced that the danger is real. This is true even in places like the Caribbean, which faces a loss of up $900 million in tourist dollars by 2050. It is predicted that sea levels in some areas will rise as much as three feet.

Hotels and Resorts

One encouraging new trend is cropping up: Some hotel builders and engineers are embracing new designs that don’t fight against the changing features of the landscape. Instead, these designs adapt to them. This approach allows these companies to address rising sea levels before their businesses are negatively impacted by this environmental change.

New Business Opportunities

Some of the hottest up-and-coming business opportunities will involve risk consulting. For example, some of these companies provide risk assessments to homeowners. People living in coastal towns can pay a small fee—around $99.00 or so—to have their properties risk-assessed. These projects look forward in time by about 30 years to give homeowners and idea of what they face with rising sea levels in the future.

Get Solid Advice About Risk Assessment

However, risk assessment goes beyond just consulting. The insurance industry has started to address this trend as well. For these companies, there exists an overriding question, which is “Is this property even worth insuring?” These are the types of questions that will be asked of industry experts in the future.

Fortunately, many educational programs are already asking their students and graduates to address these trends in their coursework, making them better equipped to deal with making decisions about the issues related to rising sea levels.

Rising sea levels will cause a multitude of issues in the coming years, requiring business professionals, such as those with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration, to think differently about how they build their businesses in the coastal areas.

While some hotel and hospitality industry business owners have already started to address these questions, there is still much to be done. Fortunately, many business leaders now as well as future industry captains have started to address these problems. They have come a long way toward finding solutions for these issues.