Sea level rise appears to be happening at a rate ten times greater than the global average in the Bay of Bengal, southwest of the city. The city is sinking at a rate of about 1.4 centimeters per year, with most urbanized areas a mere 6–8 meters above sea level. As in other cities they exploit groundwater because the rivers are polluted. Unless there is intervention, much of the land area bordering Greater Manila Bay-Pasay to Manila to Malabon to most of Bulacan province north of Manila-will go under several centimeters of water by 2050.īangladesh's capital city of Dhaka, population 18.9 million, is another low-lying, riverside city in Asia beset by a sinking feeling caused by unsustainable extraction of groundwater. The sinking increases the risk of floods and cause high tides to penetrate further inland and water to recede more slowly. Since the city has an average elevation of around five meters it is living on borrowed time. Manila with its core city population of 13.3 million people is sinking at around 10 centimeters per year. The city has about 700 buildings with 20 floors or more and 4,000 buildings with 8-20 floors, putting considerable pressure on the land on which they sit. Bangkok's sinking has been made worse by the sheer weight of its high-rise buildings which pressing into the sea the foundations of the city.
The city, now only around 1.5 meters above sea level, is sinking at a rate of about two centimeters per year. Six years ago, in 2015, its government published a report that said the city could be underwater in 15 years. Rains are not enough to replenish water in the soils because over 97 percent of Jakarta is covered in asphalt and concrete.īangkok with its 9.6 million population is also vulnerable to rising sea levels. Over half of its 10.6 million people lack access to piped water and surface water is heavily polluted, so they dig illegal wells to extract groundwater. Around 40 percent of the city now lies below current sea levels. Jakarta reportedly holds the record for the world's fastest sinking city, at a rate of around 25.4cm per year. As cities plan their retreats, the big cities slowly sink at different rates, some faster than others. The causes of the sinking cities and rising seas are not quite the same though the impacts are similar-submerging large areas of cities and populations under water in a decade or sooner. By 2040, it was expected to experience a relatively high land loss due to submergence forcing people to migrate.Īccording to the study, by 2100 the continuing sea level rise was expected to result in a loss of wetland area with nearly 22 million people experiencing floods every year in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. The study said Vietnam was in a class by itself with a high coastal plain population. The idea was that people would leave their homes voluntarily and migrate to safer places to avoid the rising seas. The study focused on migration as a response to the sinking cities.
In one of the early conferences on the problems of coastal cities, scientists from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Japan studied the impact of sea flooding on migration from coastal areas. More than a decade ago in 2008, some South-East Asian coastal nations were concerned about how vulnerable they were to the forces of the seas. As global warming comes, scientists worry that the world is heading towards a perfect storm of sinking cities and rising seas in a decade. Imperceptible to most residents, major Asian cities continue to slide under water for a variety of causes. Some 600 million people worldwide-the majority in Asia-will be affected by rising sea levels in flood-prone coastal regions, some of them economic centers. Threats come from a combination of tropical cyclones, storm surges, high tides and sea-level rise that increase risk of serious flooding by 2030. This is developing as rising sea levels and climate change are posing serious threats to the population and economy of several Asian coastal cities-Bangkok, Dhaka, Jakarta, Manila and Shanghai, among them. The 174-hectare project seeks to develop the site as a "5G-ready mini-city, complete with shopping malls, condominiums, esplanades and other business establishments." Scientists and environmentalists have called on the local government of Dumaguete to scrap the reclamation project, citing the devastating impact it may have on the marine environment and coastal communities.
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