Climate Change, Justice and Sustainability

Abstract

Climate change is a major threat to coastal populations around the world. This chapter starts by briefly describing the main effects of global climate change on coastal areas, such as the risk of flooding, the permanent inundation of inhabited areas, and salinisation of coastal groundwater resources. This is followed by a discussion of particularly vulnerable coastal types, which include densely populated river deltas, low-lying coastal cities, and low-lying islands. The main part of the chapter then presents a quantitative vulnerability assessment of all coastal countries based on different vulnerability indicators. The results emphasise the unique risk faced by the population of small island states. However, the largest numbers of people at risk from projected sea-level rise is found in populous countries in Asia. This broad picture is robust across different studies and vulnerability indicators. However, the exact level of current and future risk remains uncertain mainly due to the lack of data on present coastal protection at the global level.