While Guyana pours billions of dollars into highways, bridges, housing schemes and other headline-grabbing projects, technology, education and economics columnist Dr. Karen Abrams says the country’s most important investment remains dangerously undervalued: the sea defences that protect the narrow coastal strip where almost the entire nation lives and works.

Abrams, co-founder of STEMGuyanaand thePathway Online Academy,argues that Guyana’s unprecedented oil revenues have created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure the country’s future—but warns that failing to strengthen coastal defences could place decades of economic progress at risk.

Guyana is among the world’s most vulnerable countries to rising sea levels. Approximately 90 percent of the population lives on the low-lying coastal plain, much of it lying between half a metre and one metre below sea level at high tide. For more than three centuries, an intricate network of seawalls, earthen embankments, kokers, canals, conservancies and pumps has held back the Atlantic Ocean, protecting homes, farms, businesses and critical infrastructure. Nearly three-quarters of the country’s economic activity is concentrated on this same coastal strip, making its sea defences arguably the nation’s single most important piece of infrastructure.