The Ocean and Us

Safe Human Settlements, Coastal Protection and Combating Climate Change SDG9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation SDG11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable SDG13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Coastal Protection Coastal ecosystems can provide protection against storm surges that threaten many low lying coastal cities (SDG9 build resilient infrastructure ); (SDG11 make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable ) . Currently around 1 billion people live within 20 metres of mean sea level (WOR, 2010) and the populations of coastal megacities are projected to continue to grow, particularly in Asia. Globally, population density in flood-prone coastal zones and megacities is expected to grow by 25 per cent by 2050 (Aerts et al., 2014). Combined with projected sea level rise and increasing frequency and severity of large-scale floods, this means that a growing proportion of the world’s population will be exposed to the impacts of flooding. Coastal ecosystems protect shorelines from erosion (Gedan et al., 2010), and can play an important and cost-effective role in

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