Development Policy, Not Just Climate Change, Will Affect China’s Coastal Flood Future: Report 

The report said under the current standards 19% of the population and 22% of the GDP will be exposed to flooding.

A new study found that China’s future flood risk along its coastline will primarily be determined by government policy rather than the anticipated global sea level rise. The report, published in Nature, predicted that coastal policies will be the primary factor influencing flood occurrence by the year 2100. 

China’s coast is home to hundreds of millions of people and a large fraction of global manufacturing and trade infrastructure. Extreme tides and storm surges drive most of the flooding risk, while land subsidence, often worsened by human activity like groundwater pumping, making the situation worse.

The researchers combined climate projections with simulations of land system changes under different policies and found that while sea-level rise determines the physical extent of floods, policy decisions dictate who and what will be most exposed. Under an “ecological protection” pathway in which strict environment protection is prioritised, farmland and wetlands are more exposed, whereas under rapid economic development, expanding cities and industrial zones bear the brunt.

The research found that by 2100, if the current standards are maintained, the worst case combination could be 19.1% of the population and 22.2% of the GDP within the coastal zone exposed to flooding. 

Call for Better Planning

Experts stressed that urgent action is needed through adaptation planning and they caution against relying too heavily on levees and seawells, which can create a false sense of security and encourage riskier development. 

Scientists also called for integrated actions, stricter land-use planning, tighter controls on land subsidence, ecosystem-based defenses such as mangroves, and, where needed, managed retreat that is moving communities from high-risk areas. 

“Spatial planning to avoid development in high-risk zones is essential,” said Murray Scown, associate senior lecturer at Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS). “Rapidly reducing carbon emissions is equally critical, to prevent sea-level rise from becoming the dominant risk factor beyond 2100—not just in China, but globally.”

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