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2.2. Demographic trends There is a long history of human settlement in coastal zones, but until the twentieth century the level of disturbance to natural processes did not appear to be critical. During the twentieth century, urbanised coastal populations have been growing rapidly around the globe because of the many economic opportunities and environmental amenities that coastal zones provide (Turner et al., 1996). Low-lying areas near coasts now have the largest concentrations of people on earth (Small and Cohen, 1999). The population in the “near-coastal zone” (defined as areas both within 100 m elevation and 100 km distance of the coast) in 1990 is estimated at 1.2 billion (thousand million) (Nicholls and Small, 2002; see also Cohen et al., 1997 and Gommes et al., 1998). Nicholls and Small (2002) also showed that most of the near-coastal zone is sparsely inhabited, with the human population being concentrated in a few specific areas along the world’s coast. These areas correspond mainly to coastal plains in Europe and parts of Asia, and to a lesser extent to densely populated urban areas. Hence, there are wide variations in coastal populations amongst nations. In many small island nations, all land suitable for human habitation is coastal and in some large countries, most or all major urban centres are located near the coast (e.g., Australia). In other countries, such as Mexico, Colombia, Russia and Iran, many larger cities are found further inland, in spite of the countries’ long coastlines. The United Nations medium projection for population growth suggests that the world’s population will reach 7.2 billion by the year 2015, 7.9 billion by 2025 and 9.3 billion by 2050 (2000: 6.1 billion; UNPD, 2001). Growth rates in individual countries will be largely determined by the country’s current demographic patterns and fertility rate. Age structures in most developing countries are such that during the coming decades greater numbers of people will come into their prime reproductive years than in industrialised countries. Furthermore, fertility rates are generally higher in developing countries, albeit declining. As a result, all projected population growth until 2050 is expected to occur in the developing world (UNPD, 2001). Most of the population growth in developing countries will occur in urban settings and much of this will be concentrated in coastal zones, as has been the case in most industrialised countries. It is projected that by 2015 there will be 33 cities with a population of more than eight million (UNPD, 2001). As shown in Table 2, 21 of these megacities are located in coastal zones. This table, which is an update of the overviews provided by WCC’93 (1994) and Nicholls (1995a), also shows that seventeen of the 21 largest megacities are coastal and that with the exception of Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Osaka, Paris and Moscow all projected megacities are situated in developing countries. Continued growth of urban areas can be expected after 2015, especially in Africa and Asia (UNEP, 2002), resulting in the development of additional coastal megacities to those shown in Table 2. Some care should be taken in interpreting the data presented in Table 2. A certain degree of subjectivity is inevitable in labelling a megacity as coastal, especially because there are no straightforward definitions of a coastal zone. São Paolo, for example, is not considered coastal because it is situated at an elevation of 800 metres above sea level. However, its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the port of Santos has yielded benefits that would not have been available in places further inland (e.g., as a coffee trading capital). On the other hand, cities like Dhaka, Calcutta and Cairo are situated at some distance from the sea, yet in Table 2 they are considered coastal because of their deltaic setting. Other cities, such as Los Angeles, Seoul and Istanbul, have developed on coasts with steeper gradients and hence parts of their agglomerations extend outside the coastal plain. The predominant criterion to classify a city as coastal in Table 2 is whether it has economic and geomorphic characteristics that are typically or exclusively coastal (e.g., sea port, deltaic or estuarine setting). Some coastal agglomerations with populations exceeding 8 million may have been omitted because of the dataset used for Table 2. These include Greater London in the United Kingdom and the Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Guangzhou conurbation in China (Nicholls, 1995a). More dispersed agglomerations are not considered either, such as the Amsterdam-Brussels axis in The Netherlands and Belgium, the Osaka-Nagoya-Tokyo axis in Japan and ‘Megalopolis’ in the United States, which stretches over 600 km from Boston, MA to Washington, DC and has a collective population approaching 50 million. Such dispersed coastal agglomerations may also emerge in the developing world, such as from Accra, Ghana to Lagos, Nigeria, embracing parts of four countries. 4
» » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » Rank Agglomeration Country Population size (million) Expected growth (%) 1975 2000 2015 2000–2015 1 Tokyo Japan 19.771 26.444 26.444 0.00 2 Bombay India 6.856 18.066 26.138 44.68 3 Lagos Nigeria 3.300 13.427 23.173 72.59 4 Dhaka Bangladesh 2.172 12.317 21.119 71.46 5 São Paolo Brazil 10.047 17.755 20.397 14.88 6 Karachi Pakistan 3.983 11.794 19.211 62.89 7 Mexico City Mexico 11.236 18.131 19.180 5.79 8 New York United States of America 15.880 16.640 17.432 4.76 9 Jakarta Indonesia 4.814 11.018 17.256 56.62 10 Calcutta India 7.888 12.918 17.252 33.55 11 Delhi India 4.426 11.695 16.808 43.72 12 Metro Manila Philippines 5.000 10.870 14.825 36.38 13 Shanghai China 11.443 12.887 14.575 13.10 14 Los Angeles United States of America 8.926 13.140 14.080 7.15 15 Buenos Aires Argentina 9.144 12.560 14.076 12.07 16 Cairo Egypt 6.079 10.552 13.751 30.32 17 Istanbul Turkey 3.601 9.451 12.492 32.18 18 Beijing China 8.545 10.839 12.299 13.47 19 Rio de Janeiro Brazil 7.854 10.582 11.905 12.50 20 Osaka Japan 9.844 11.013 11.013 0.00 21 Tianjin China 6.160 9.156 10.713 17.01 22 Hyderabad India 2.086 6.842 10.457 52.84 23 Bangkok Thailand 3.842 7.281 10.143 39.31 24 Lahore Pakistan 2.399 6.040 9.961 64.92 25 Seoul Republic of Korea 6.808 9.888 9.923 0.35 26 Paris France 8.885 9.624 9.677 0.55 27 Lima Peru 3.651 7.443 9.388 26.13 28 Kinshasa Dem. Rep. of the Congo 1.735 5.064 9.366 84.95 29 Moscow Russian Federation 7.623 9.321 9.353 0.34 30 Madras India 3.609 6.648 9.145 37.56 31 Chongqing China 2.439 5.312 8.949 68.47 32 Teheran Islamic Republic of Iran 4.274 7.225 8.709 20.54 33 Bogotá Colombia 3.036 6.288 8.006 27.32 Total (coastal agglomerations) 150.6 254.1 324.1 27.53 Total (all agglomerations) 217.4 368.2 467.2 26.88 Rank in 1975 1 15 33 43 5 16 4 2 22 12 23 21 3 8 7 20 32 10 13 6 19 45 28 41 16 9 30 n/a 14 31 40 25 35 Rank in 2000 1 3 6 11 4 12 2 5 14 8 13 16 9 7 10 19 22 17 18 15 24 31 27 35 20 21 25 40 23 32 38 28 34 n/a: not available. Table 2 — The world’s largest cities, with projected populations in 2015 exceeding eight million. Arrows indicate coastal agglomerations (population data from UNPD, 2001). Urban populations tend to have higher consumption levels than their rural counterparts, as well as different consumption patterns. The increasing demand for food requires increasing productivity in fisheries and agriculture. However, this is often impeded by the loss of agricultural land to urban expansion and the reduction of fisheries potential due to habitat loss and pollution of rivers and coastal waters from urban and industrial waste. In addition, the large populations in many coastal areas around the world are, to a greater or lesser extent, vulnerable to hazardous events associated with natural coastal dynamics such as storm surges, floods and tsunamis. Human-induced climate change and sealevel rise will further increase this vulnerability, as discussed in Section 3. 2.3. Economic values and competing demands In addition to population growth and urbanisation, coastal areas are facing unprecedented pressures on the economic development of their resources (Turner et al., 1996; Post and Lundin, 1996). The diversity of functions performed by natural coastal systems supports a variety of economic activities. As stated in Section 2.1, important economic activities in coastal zones include tourism and recreation, exploitation of living and non-living resources, industry and commerce, infrastructure development and nature conservation. Industry and commerce and infrastructure development are closely related to demographic developments as discussed in Section 2.2. This section focuses on tourism and recreation, fisheries and nature conservation. 2.3.1. Tourism and recreation Tourism represents an important and growing economic activity in many parts of the world. In 1995, global international tourist receipts amounted to US$ 400 billion and most of this is coastal (OECD, 1997). Including domestic travel, tourism is the world’s largest single industry 5
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