Adaption Toolkit: Sea-level Rise and Coastal Land Use

Climate change is happening. Past greenhouse gas emissions have committed us to decades of rising temperatures and seas. Recent studies, factoring in ice-sheet melt, estimate that we may experience an average of up to 6 feet of sea-level rise across the globe over the next century. The potential physical and fiscal impacts of sea-level rise (SLR) are stark. We are already seeing increasing erosion of our beaches and the inundation of low-lying wetlands. Physically, SLR will intensify impacts from storm surge, flooding, and erosion. Fiscally, governments will need to spend large amounts of money on emergency response and to rebuild flooded infrastructure. Valuable government tax base and significant private investment will literally fall into the sea. And, if governments fail to plan for these impacts, legal fallout is a certainty.