Coastal infrastructureDamage to coastal infrastructure from storm surges, floods may reach 9% of global GDP

Damage to the world’s coastal infrastructure as a result of flooding, sea level rise, and coastline development is expected to cost as much as 9 percent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) according to a new report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

In an effort to quantify the impact of coastline destruction caused by rising sea levels, researchers used information from Space Shuttle missions and satellite sensing to estimate the value of assets which would be destroyed. Estimating the costs of sea level rise requires knowing the rate of warming and predicting the value of future coastline developments.

John Trimmer, science editor for Ars Technica, says that if the global economy and development continues with a “business as usual” mentality, sea level rise is likely to cost over 9.5 percent of global GDP. “The value of assets within the reach of a 100-year flood event will range between $17 trillion and $180 trillion by the end of the century — and that’s under an emissions scenario that’s unrealistically low,” Trimmer notes. “Under business-as-usual emissions… the figures will range from $21 trillion to $210 trillion… Even under the unrealistically low emissions scenario, the losses could reach up to five percent of the global GDP annually.”

According to Ring of Fire, the PNAS report examines the larger implications of sea level rise if government policies remain as they are. Reports in the Houston Chronicle, Mother Jones, among others, show that in some coastal states there is considerable resistance to consider the implications of sea-level rise and to fashioning appropriate mitigation measures.

— Read more in Jochen Hinkel et al., “Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs under 21st century sea-level rise,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (31 January 2014) (doi: 10.1073/pnas.1222469111)