[NTD News June 16, 2021, Beijing time]Global warming and accelerated melting of glaciers have led to rising sea levels, and coastal cities are facing huge risks. British media analyzed that sea level rise will pose a great threat to China’s economic center, and Shanghai is the most vulnerable.
According to a report by the Financial Times in London last week, through analysis of unpublished data, China’s eastern coastal areas are facing the threat of rising sea levels, which may affect trillions of dollars in economic activity. Only one in Shanghai The impact of the land reached 974 billion US dollars.
The analysis combines estimates of sea level conditions by the U.S. non-profit organization “Local Weather Central” and unpublished data provided by Finnish researchers. The data is calculated using 2019 purchasing power parity to calculate per capita GDP data and uses population density. To calculate various valuations.
China’s main financial center, Shanghai, located between the Yangtze River estuary and Hangzhou Bay, is most vulnerable to rising sea levels. It is estimated that USD 973.7 billion of GDP in 2019 is at risk.
Among the 34 cities in the data set, Suzhou and Jiaxing, located within 100 kilometers west of Shanghai, ranked second and third in GDP in 2019, with US$330.4 billion and US$128.8 billion respectively affected.
In addition to densely populated metropolises, high-risk areas also include other key parts of China’s industrial supply chain and high-tech R&D areas, such as Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, and Panasonic (China) Co., Ltd. in Suzhou. Industrial park.
Although the tides are unlikely to rise to the level of submerging infrastructure within a few decades, the researchers warn that increasing floods, storms and soil erosion, as well as reduced fresh water supplies, may have an impact on economic growth before then. damage.
In another assessment, Guangdong’s major commercial and manufacturing centers are also at a high level of risk. In the global ranking of cities vulnerable to flooding released by “Maplecroft”, a global risk and strategy consulting company headquartered in Bath, UK, Guangzhou and Dongguan are at the top.
Maplecroft wrote last year that the lowland nature of the Pearl River Delta means that even conservative sea-level rise forecasts will have a serious impact on the region’s economy. About one-fifth of the city’s area in Guangzhou is classified as a high-risk or extreme-risk area. .
China’s ocean management department publishes reports on sea level rise and storm surge tracking every year. The National Climate Center of the Communist Party of China wrote in its annual blue book published in August 2020 that from 1980 to 2019, the average sea level in China’s coastal areas was averaged annually. An increase of 3.4 millimeters, 0.2 millimeters higher than the global average.
However, the Chinese government and researchers have not published a global assessment of sea level rise in the coming decades. CCP officials have rejected international predictions in the past, including those of Climate Central, a non-profit organization based in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the Communist Party of China did not respond to the Financial Times’ request for comment.
(Reporter Li Zhaoxi compiles the report/Editor in charge: Li Jia)
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