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The ability of societies to adapt to twenty-first-century sea-level rise

Abstract

Against the background of potentially substantial sea-level rise, one important question is to what extent are coastal societies able to adapt? This question is often answered in the negative by referring to sinking islands and submerged megacities. Although these risks are real, the picture is incomplete because it lacks consideration of adaptation. This Perspective explores societies’ abilities to adapt to twenty-first-century sea-level rise by integrating perspectives from coastal engineering, economics, finance and social sciences, and provides a comparative analysis of a set of cases that vary in terms of technological limits, economic and financial barriers to adaptation and social conflicts.

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Fig. 1: Coastal adaptation constraints.
Fig. 2: Polder system in coastal Bangladesh south of Khulia.
Fig. 3: Stilt houses on a river bank in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Fig. 4: Malé, the capital island of The Maldives.

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Acknowledgements

J.H., J.C.J.H.A., S.B., J.A.J., D.L., R.J.N., P.S., A.S.A. and A.V. received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration under grant agreement no 603396 (RISES-AM project). J.H. and D.L. also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 642018 (GREEN-WIN project) and from the DFG under the SEASCAPE project as part of the Special Priority Program (SPP)-1889 "Regional Sea Level Change and Society" (SeaLevel). J.C.J.H.A. also received funding from Dutch Science foundation VICI grant no. 453-13-006. J.A.J. was also funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness project PaiRisClima (CGL2014-55387-R). We thank J. Merkens for providing the values included in Table 1. We also thank A. Shareef and Z. Khaleel from the Ministry of Environment and Energy for extended discussions about adapting to SLR in the Maldives.

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J.H. conceived this study, drafted the general sections of the paper and contributed to drafting each case study. J.C.J.H.A. carried out and drafted the New York case study. S.B., D.L., R.J.N. and J.H. carried out and drafted the Maldives case study. R.J.N. and S.B. carried out and drafted the Bangladesh case study. J.A.J. and A.S.A. carried out and drafted the Catalonia case study. P.S. carried out and drafted the Ho Chi Minh City case study. P.S. and J.C.J.H.A. carried out and drafted the Netherlands case study. K.A.A. and N.V. contributed to the drafting the discussion.

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Correspondence to Jochen Hinkel.

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Hinkel, J., Aerts, J.C.J.H., Brown, S. et al. The ability of societies to adapt to twenty-first-century sea-level rise. Nature Clim Change 8, 570–578 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0176-z

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