Sea flood could incur huge losses to Mumbai, Kolkata by 2050

A study published in Nature Climate Change has warned that Mumbai and Kolkata along with other 136 coastal cities around the world could incur huge losses, due to sea flooding by 2050. The commercial capital of India may lose 6.4 billion dollars, while Kolkata will lose 3.4 billion dollars annually.

The combined loss incurred by all the cities could be as big as 1 trillion dollar unless they drastically increase their sea defense expenditure. Due to climate change, subsidence, growing population and assets, flood risk in these coastal cities has increased.

Average global flood losses in 2005 are estimated to be approximately $6 billion per year. Assuming cities improve their protection to contain the flood risk to current levels and based purely on the projected growth of city populations and the assets accumulated there, the team warned of a nine-fold increase in losses to $52 billion per year by 2050.

According to the study, other major cities with the highest projected annual losses by 2050 were Guangzhou ($13.2 billion), Guayaquil ($3.2 billion) in Ecuador and Shenzhen ($3.1 billion) in China. The projected annual loss for Miami was $2.5 billion, followed by Tianjin in China with a loss of $2.3 billion.

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