FEATURE-West Africans rue rising seas as climate talks stall

*West Africa's coastal cities suffer sea surge

* Poor planning, erosion worsen plight

* Build coastal defences, experts urge

By Tim Cocks and Loucoumane Coulibaly

GRAND-LAHOU, Ivory Coast, June 11 (Reuters) - When the ocean swallowed up their homes, it also divided the people of this sleepy Ivorian fishing village -- half of them moved inland, the other half stayed to brave the waves.

Picking through the decaying, algae-caked shell of a concrete house that was ruined years ago by the advancing Atlantic, fisherman Jack Baueur said he had no regrets.

"It would have been too hard to leave," he said. "We were born here. We don't want to start a life somewhere else. We're going to stay here until the sea floods us out."

In populated coastal West Africa, rising sea levels linked to the melting of the polar ice caps are conspiring with coastal erosion to slowly submerge communities.

Climate negotiators from around the world were winding up talks in Bonn, Germany, on Friday, to try to thrash out a new U.N. treaty on global warming and CO2 emissions, after failing to reach a binding deal in Copenhagen last year.