Sinking cities need major aid
– Governments must provide “major” investment in flood risk reduction to save coastal cities around the world, a charity said yesterday, as rising seas and sinking urban areas pose unprecedented threats to millions of homes.
Cities such as Jakarta – which is sinking 25cm each year – Bangkok, Houston and Shanghai risk being inundated within decades as a mixture of poor planning, megastorms and higher tides wreaks havoc.
London-based charity Christian Aid studied eight coastal cities around the world that are sinking, potentially compounding the misery that rising sea levels will inflict on inhabitants.
“The impacts of climate change will be seen across the world. This summer we had a very warm northern hemisphere, abnormally so,” Kat Kramer, global climate lead at Christian Aid, said.
“Many of the big cities in the developing world are extraordinarily vulnerable to climate change, which is why it’s important they are given support to adapt and build resilience.
“Lives are already being lost through extreme weather events,” Kramer said.
The call coincides with the release next week of a major United Nations report expected to urge governments to drastically increase their efforts to limit global temperature rises.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will examine the effect of global warming of 1.50C above preindustrial levels.
That is the most ambitious target that nations signed up to in the 2015 Paris treaty on climate change, which aims to limit temperature increases to “well below 20C” by the end of the century.
But even keeping the world within that temperature range will have a catastrophic impact on coastal cities, with studies showing a 20C increase could raise sea levels by up to half a metre.
The paper picked out Jakarta, Bangkok, Lagos, Manila, Dhaka, Shanghai, Houston and London – home to a combined 100 million people – as particularly at risk.
The charity highlighted a host of local factors that contribute to sinkage, the majority manmade.
In Jakarta, a city of 10 million people, half the population lacks access to piped water, so many dig illegal wells to extract groundwater. This puts greater pressure on the soil. –