PARIS — For thousands of years, people have built their great metropolises right up against the contours of coasts, in estuaries and deltas, confident of the ebb and flow of the tides.
Domination of the seas allowed many coastal cities to become trading powerhouses and cultural melting pots.
But now that strength is becoming a liability as climate change swells the oceans, redrawing the map and putting hundreds of millions at risk.
That’s the warning of an unpublished draft report by the UN’s climate science advisory panel, seen exclusively by AFP, which outlines the vast and urgent climate threats facing the planet.
From the air, you can see the problem.
In city upon…
Keep on reading: Coastal cities face their mortality on the climate ‘frontline’