![]() When migrants settle in larger cities they add to existing challenges, particularly in developing countries often unable to provide basic infrastructure or social protection in response to accelerated growth 18, 19, 20. Further, in coming decades, climate-change driven migration is expected to increase dramatically. Of these 31 million people are living in the 100-year storm surge floodplains, 92% of whom live in developing or least-developed economies 17. A recent study shows that 339 million people live on deltas throughout the world. For example, cities are responsible for ~70% of global CO 2 emissions from final energy use, but are disproportionately and increasingly exposed to the impacts of climate change, since 90% of urban areas-and the majority of the world’s population-are situated on coastlines 16. The effects of multiple interacting changes that can be traced to the expansion of cities, generates new and extreme global vulnerabilities 12, 13, making global urban change a frontier of science for sustainability 14, 15. Global urbanization (the increasing concentration in urban settlements of the increasing world population), is a driver and accelerator of many of these processes 11. In a globalized world characterized by shifting patterns of inequality, new cross-scale interactions, and decoupling from ecological processes 5, 6, 7, 8, altered disturbance regimes increasingly lead to shocks that were previously contained within a geographic area or a sector, but now are becoming globally contagious 9, 10. ![]() New risks emerge from interactions at the interface of multiple systems including climatic, ecological, political, social, institutional, infrastructural, financial, and technological systems 1, 2, 3, 4. We live in turbulent times-the Anthropocene-where rapid changes are occurring in biophysical conditions driven by accelerating growth in human activity.
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