Connecting Delta Cities

Book excerpt: At present, more than 50% of the entire world population lives in cities. According to the United Nations more than two-thirds of the world's large cities are vulnerable to rising sea levels, exposing millions of people to the risk of extreme floods and storms. Within the coming 30 years, the United Nations project that the number of people living in cities will increase to 60% of the world's population, resulting in even more people living in highly exposed areas. Both scientists and policy makers have addressed the issue of adapting to the challenge of climate change, and both call for embedding long term scenarios in city planning and investments in all sectors. Based on estimations of costs of estimations, it appears that investing in adaptation now would save money in the long term. This book shows the different aspects of climate adaptation. It is an independent investigation of comparative adaptation problems and progress in the cities of Rotterdam, New York and Jakarta. In this regard, each city faces different challenges; one of the lessons of the Connecting Delta Cities initiative is that while cities will follow adaptation paths that may differ, sometimes substantially, each city can learn from the others.