Mega-Stress for Mega-Cities: A Climate Vulnerability Ranking of Major Coastal Cities in Asia

Asia is arguably among the regions of the world most vulnerable to climate change. Climate change and climatic variability have and will continue to impact all sectors, from national and economic security to human health, food production, infrastructure, water availability and ecosystems. The evidence of climate change in Asia is widespread: overall temperatures have risen from 1°C to 3°C over the last 100 years, precipitation patterns have changed, the number of extreme weather events is increasing, and sea levels are rising. Because many of the largest cities in Asia are located on the coast and within major river deltas, they are even more susceptible to the impacts of climate change. In response, this report highlights the vulnerability of some of those cities - with the goal of increasing regional awareness of the impacts of climate change, providing a starting point for further research and policy discussions, and triggering action to protect people and nature in and around Asia’s megacities from mega-stress in the future.

Cities cover less than 1% of the planet’s surface, and are home to around 50% of the world’s population, and many of them see a rapid growth trend. Taken together, all cities and urban areas worldwide use 75% of the world’s energy and are responsible for 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Without major breakthroughs on energy efficiency and emission reductions in cities, we will fail to avoid dangerous climate change in urban as well as rural areas. Cities are hotspots of innovation and technology and have therefore traditionally been the places where many of the solutions to the world’s problems have been developed, making all cities potential leaders in the global effort for a low carbon future.

This report, however, focuses on climate variability and adaptive capacity of cities. It is divided up into four sections: context, methodology, scorecards, and policy. While we highlight the major climate change effects impacting 11 key Asian cities, this summary is by no means an exhaustive review. The cities chosen for this report represent large, mostly coastal cities which are all threatened by climate change. These particular cities were chosen because they represent a good cross section of coastal Asia and the impacts of climate change were assessed as significant. We encourage governments and all other relevant stakeholders to use this report as a catalyst for further discussions on the issue of climate change in the region, deciding where additional research is needed, and what the appropriate polices should be.

For each scorecard, we provide a short profile of the selected city, highlight the observed climatic change, summarize the major climate impacts the city is facing, and suggest some adaptation strategies that may decrease the city’s vulnerability. For this analysis, the vulnerability of the cities is a function of their exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. These three categories were averaged to get the overall vulnerability score. It should be noted that WWF has approached the issue of vulnerability in this report with the most simplistic analysis possible, and we appreciate that there are many additional factors to consider and alternative methods for assessing vulnerability.