![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.euronews.com\/website\/images\/logos\/logo-euronews-stacked-outlined-72x72-grey-9.svg\"){kind=logo}
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
\n Published on
\n 06\/10\/2025 – 15:00 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
Sea levels will drastically rise and push millions of buildings into danger if the world continues burning fossil fuels, a new report has warned.<\/p>\n
Researchers have conducted the first-ever large-scale, building-by-building assessment on the future of coastal infrastructure across the Global South – covering Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America.<\/p>\n
Using detailed satellite maps and elevation data, scientists estimated how many buildings would be \u201cinundated\u201d at various levels of sea over multi-century timescales.<\/p>\n
An \u2018unstoppable consequence\u2019 of global warming<\/p>\n
Published in Urban Sustainability<\/a>, the study explores scenarios between 0.5 and 20 metres of sea level rise<\/a>. It found that even the lowest increase (predicted to occur even if emissions are significantly cut) would result in around three million buildings being flooded regularly.<\/p>\n \u201cSea level rise is a slow, but unstoppable consequence of warming that is already impacting coastal populations and will continue for centuries,” says professor Natalya Gomez, co-author of the study and Canada Research Chair in Ice Sheet\u2013Sea Level Interactions at McGill University.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople often talk about sea level rising by tens of centimetres, or maybe a metre, but in fact it could continue to rise for many metres if we don’t quickly stop burning fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n Rising sea levels could impact \u2018entire neighbourhoods\u2019<\/p>\n If sea levels<\/a> were to rise to five metres or more \u2013 which experts warn could happen within a few hundred years \u2013 more than 100 million buildings will be put at risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe were surprised at the large number of buildings at risk from relatively modest long-term sea level rise,\u201d adds professor Jeff Cardile, co-author and professor at McGill University.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSome coastal countries are much more exposed than others, due to details of the coastal topography and locations of buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of these buildings are located in densely populated and low-lying areas, meaning critical infrastructure and “entire neighbourhoods\u201d would be impacted.<\/p>\n Are sea levels rising in Europe?<\/p>\n While the McGill-led study only focuses on the Global South, rising sea levels are a severe threat for the whole world – including Europe.<\/p>\n Last year, a modelling study published in Scientific Reports<\/a> found that damage caused by sea level rises could cost the EU and UK economies billions by the end of the century.<\/p>\n Researchers estimated potential economic losses and gains compared to a scenario with no sea level rises and a two per cent annual economic growth across all regions – combined with previous data on economic losses caused by 155 flooding events across the continent between 1995 and 2016.<\/p>\n They found that under a high emissions scenario, sea level rise could cost a staggering \u20ac872 billion in total by the year 2100.<\/p>\n Regions slated to be hit the hardest by rising sea levels included Veneto and Emilia-Romagna in Italy, Zachodniopomorskie in Poland, as well as concentrated areas around the Baltic Sea, the Belgian coast, western France and Greece.<\/p>\n However, rising sea levels are already having a devastating effect across Europe. In Barcelona, for example, residents fear that man-made beaches are being swallowed up due to climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n Back in 2019, Venice suffered catastrophic flooding<\/a> linked to high sea levels and heavy precipitation – which resulted in hundreds of millions of euros worth of damage. Over in Greece, on the island of Delos<\/a>, UNESCO world heritage sites have already witnessed structural damage due to increased flooding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 06\/10\/2025 – 15:00 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT Sea levels will drastically rise and push millions of buildings into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,68,13618,75,24654,8666,40175,128,106042],"class_list":{"0":"post-200401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-coastal-erosion","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-floods","14":"tag-fossil-fuels","15":"tag-global-south","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-sea-level"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}