Coastal retreat (shoreline erosion)
The gradual loss of coastline to erosion, which the French natural catastrophe regime does not cover because it is foreseeable and slow.
Insurance covers a random, sudden event; coastal retreat is a known, measured and slow process that eventually makes a building uninhabitable without any loss that can be dated. It therefore remains outside the French natural catastrophe regime, except when a specific storm tears away a stretch of cliff or dune at once. The 2021 Climate and Resilience Act chose another path: mapping the areas exposed at thirty and at one hundred years, restricting building there, and having municipalities organize relocation. It is the example of a climate risk that is planned for rather than transferred, and of property that loses its value before it loses its use.
Le Signal apartment building, in Soulac-sur-Mer in the Gironde, built about two hundred meters from the ocean in 1967, was evacuated by order in January 2014 when the dune retreated to its foundations, and its demolition began in February 2023; the law of August 22, 2021 then created local coastal retreat maps.
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