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84 | RESILIENT COASTS

COASTAL CITIES,

RESILIENCE LEADERS

“Coastal cities are the nexus of these issues”, de-
clared Karen Sack, Director of the Ocean Risk and
Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA) who is helping to
drive investment into Nature-based Solutions. The
floating city of the future, presented as a video by Ro-
bin Kemper, engineer and risk consultant at Zurich
Resilience Solutions, showed a turning point: “Based
on nature, urban innovation currently hinges on an
alliance between engineering and science. We need IN
reliable data and interactivity to design appropriate
buildings”. FIGURES

“Cities need to take a leadership role: they have many
solutions to reverse the trend”, believes Policy Ma- ■ 75% of global carbon emissions are
nager Ocean at WWF International, drawing on the generated by urban areas,
solutions explored in the World Economic Forum’s re-
port “BiodiverCities by 2030” (January 2022). Accor- ■ Nature-based Solutions for coastal
ding to the report, cities of the future need to make 3 protection are 50% cheaper than “grey”
systemic shifts: adopt a systems approach and pro- solutions, the goal is to associate the two for
tect natural ecosystems, whilst taking into account more impact and sustainability,
measures so that a “city’s natural capital” becomes
an attractive investment for financial markets and pri- ■ 59 million jobs in the cities of the entire
vate funds. world could be created by investments that
are “positive for nature”.
The Stimson Centre, which is conducting an assess-
ment of 11 coastal cities, promotes a sectoral ap-
proach for urban issues, “as cities have to face va-
rious threats, all of which are interdependent”, added
Sally Yozell, during the second panel.