Regions in US, China most at risk for climate damage

PARIS: Major industrial and economic centres in China and the United States are among the most vulnerable regions in the world to the increasingly destructive power of climate change-driven weather extremes, according to a comprehensive analysis on Monday.

The new findings underscore the urgent need for governments to focus on decarbonisation and adaptation measures such as flood-proofing -- and show the economic fallout from climate change could be grave and widespread.

Nine of the top 10 most at-risk regions are in China, with two of the country´s largest sub-national economies -- Jiangsu and Shandong -- leading the global ranking by The Cross Dependency Initiative (XDI). After China, the US has the most high-risk states. Florida, number 10 in global rankings, is the US state most in jeopardy, followed by California and Texas.

China, India and the United States make up over half the states and provinces in the top 100. “We get an extremely strong signal from countries like China, from the US and India, and we see essentially the engine rooms of the global economy where there is a lot of built infrastructure,” Karl Mallon, head of science and innovation at XDI, said at a briefing. The analysis found that both inland and coastal flooding pose the greatest risks to physical infrastructure.