Coastal Megacities Case Study

Summary:
Coastal megacities are encountering a number of challenges and risks in different aspects such as social and economic aspect because of their geographical position. The problems facing in coastal megacities may have tremendous effect on the whole world as a result of globalization. Therefore the global are recommended to cooperate together to discuss appreciate solutions of the problems.
The challenges and risks in coastal megacities can be categorized into mainly three aspects: socio-political, economic and environmental aspect. Speaking of the socio-political aspect, the coastal megacities are under pressures of population growth, governance regimes and political stability. Economic aspect represents economic losses due to natural
The risks positioned in coastal areas so as to face are not only due to natural factors, but also the anthropic factors which have made the situation more worse. The natural climate change has led to the rising sea level. Moreover, human activities like reshaping coastlines which affect sensitive ecosystems and local sinking of land resulting from sediment compaction and over-extraction of groundwater.
Under the effect of globalization, the challenges facing in coastal megacities is not only the matter of themselves since megacities are connected to and co-dependent on other countries all over the world. To conclude, should the world work together to develop an international and integrated archive for coordinated risk management and knowledge sharing coped with long-term monitoring and model refinement so as to figure out sustainable and workable resolutions for global affairs like risks faced in coastal
Hong Kong has gone through rapid economic and population growth in the last three decades. As a low-lying urbanized coastal region, Hong Kong is so vulnerable to flood risks from unpredictable climatic conditions. These can result in increasing storm surges, rising sea level and intensified rainstorms causing coastal and inland flooding. Considering the fact that some major coastal areas such as Tai O, Shenzhen River site, have experienced recent inland and coastal flooding incidences, these sites equally exhibit the conflicts of planning development issues, as well as addressing flood risk management practices. In other words, Hong Kong government should take every single aspect in consideration when proceeding any regulation project. For example, besides some hard-engineering approaches as if widening the river for increasing the drainage capacity, government needs to consider the impacts that will be brought into the environmental, social and economic sides. Dudgeon (1996) indicated that such river regulation approaches would cause severe damage to local freshwater fauna in all catchments of Hong Kong including Shenzhen River. He identified that 11 out of a total of 32 primary freshwater species which are endemic to Hong Kong, were threatened with extinction or were already extinct due to some river regulation activities. Ng