Poor prospects
Small and midsize cities in poor countries will be among those that suffer most from climate change’s droughts, floods, landslides, and rising waters, an expert on the world’s urban poor said Monday (Dec. 13). Experts expect the world population to rise from 6.8 billion to roughly 9 billion by midcentury, with much of the growth — and hence most of the suffering from the effects of climate change — happening in smaller cities scattered throughout the developing world rather than megacities such as Mumbai, said Mark Montgomery, an economics professor at Stony Brook University. A big challenge facing researchers and government officials, however, is that almost nothing is known about these cities, Montgomery said. That is a critical gap because to be effective, mitigation strategies have to be evidence based, so that improvements and protections are made where people are most vulnerable. “Urban adaptation strategies have to be spatially specific and evidence based,”...