Meanwhile, troubled coastal cities around the world are taking note, says Bren Haase, head of planning for the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. With a playbook in place, Louisiana already boasts a 50-year, $50 billion plan to rebuild the state’s coasts, one that’s grounded in decades of data and science; it’s also being translated into several languages, including Vietnamese, Spanish and French, for other countries to reference. Flush with billions of dollars from the settlement in the catastrophic BP oil spill, the Coastal Master Plan could hold key clues for other places facing a similar fate in the future, says Haase, including flood-risk areas like New York, London, Singapore and Kiribati. Moreover, Louisiana’s coastal restoration sector is fueling high-tech projects like artificial oyster reef creation, advanced hydrologic modeling and geosynthetics, which will help shore up the state’s defenses against behemoth hurricanes and oil spills.
