Future flood losses in major coastal cities

A new study carried out by the World Bank and OECD identifies cities around the world that will be most at risk from damaging floods. The study, which appears in “Nature Climate Change”, finds the costs of global flood damage could rise to $1 trillion a year if cities do not take steps to adapt. The authors find that because current flood defenses and urbanization patterns have been designed for past environmental conditions, even a moderate change in sea level is sufficient to make them inadequate, thus magnifying flood losses to catastrophic levels. The authors encourage early action and warn that some of the cities where flood risk will increase the most in the coming years are not the cities where the risk is particularly high today.