"Much of humanity lives close to the shore. A 2024 study estimated that in 2018, around 2 billion people lived within 50 kilometres of a coast, with half of them - about 15% of the world's population - settled within just 10 km ( A. G. Cosby et al. Sci. Rep. 14, 22489; 2024). Coastal zones are also growing faster than inland areas: between 2000 and 2018, some 460 million people moved to the coast, a shift the authors liken to adding 46 new megacities of 10 million residents each."
"At the same time, sea levels are rising faster than at any point in modern history and coastal megacities are often more susceptible to subsidence. Indonesia's US$51-billion plan to move its capital from Jakarta - one of the world's fastest sinking cities - to a new city, Nusantara on the island of Borneo, by 2045, is one acute example."
About 2 billion people lived within 50 kilometres of a coast in 2018, with roughly half of them—about 15% of the global population—settled within 10 km. Coastal zones grew faster than inland areas between 2000 and 2018, as some 460 million people moved to the coast, a migration comparable to adding forty-six new megacities of 10 million residents. Sea levels are rising faster than at any point in modern history, and many coastal megacities face increased subsidence risk. Large-scale relocation initiatives, such as Indonesia’s US$51-billion plan to move its capital from sinking Jakarta to Nusantara by 2045, illustrate the scale of the challenge.
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