LONDON — A UN report launched here on Thursday says few of the world’s coastal cities will be spared by climate change. In the 20th century, sea levels rose by an estimated 17 centimeters, and global mean projections for sea level rise between 1990 and 2080 range from 22 centimeters to 34 centimeters. The low elevation coastal zone — the continuous area along coastlines that is less than 10 meters above sea level — represents 2 percent of the world’s land area but contains 10 percent of its total population and 13 percent of its urban population, says the report ‘State of the World’s Cities 2008/9: Harmonious Cities’ launched by the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-HABITAT) after analyzing urban inequalities in 28 developing countries. But at a time when over 50 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, the report sets out to determine which cities are in danger and which communities might well be drowned out. There are 3,351 cities in the low elevation coastal zones around the world. Of these cities, 64 percent are in developing regions; Asia alone accounts […]