Current projections of global average sea level rise are now expected to double by 2100, which would be severely damaging – if not disastrous – for many of theworld’s coastal cities, from Ho Chi Minh City and Mumbai to New Orleans and Miami.
Yet the upcoming United Nations conference on sustainable urban development,Habitat III, is unlikely to create the international platform needed to tackle such a global threat, according to Dan Lewis, head of UN Habitat’s urban risk reduction unit.
“The communication of risk is something that most UN member states are not prepared to openly discuss, unless they happen to be Tuvalu or the Maldives or other South Pacific or Caribbean islands,” Lewis told the Guardian.