Egypt Among Countries Facing Large Proportional Ecosystem Losses From Rising Seas

Rising seas threaten more than beaches and wetlands. A new study suggests that the economic value of what nature does for coastal societies, from protecting shorelines to filtering water, could shrink sharply by the end of the century, and that Egypt is among the countries with the largest proportional losses. Daily News Egypt reported the findings on 9 November.

The study was published on 3 November in PNAS Nexus. Its lead author, Shaoqing Long of the School of Ecology at Sun Yat-sen University in China, describes ecosystem services as the benefits nature provides to society, including food and water supplies, pollution removal, storm protection, carbon storage and tourism. The aim was to estimate the global scale of the losses, how they vary by country, and whether low-emitting nations could carry a disproportionate share.

The researchers combined sea-level rise projections from the latest IPCC assessments with global land-use maps and a database that values services from forests, farmland, wetlands and grasslands. Using a 2024 map as the baseline, they estimated which areas could be submerged between 2030 and 2100 under five pathways, from strong emissions cuts to high emissions, and adjusted for income changes. They then compared each country's cumulative per-capita emissions from 1850 to 2024 with its projected per-capita losses.

Depending on the pathway, annual global losses reach about USD 130 billion to about USD 339 billion by 2100, with about USD 164 billion in the intermediate case, in international dollars at 2020 values. Most of the losses build up after 2060. In the intermediate scenario China has the largest absolute loss, about USD 36.7 billion a year, followed by Myanmar, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam.

In proportional terms the picture changes. The Netherlands, Egypt, the Bahamas, Belgium and Iraq are among the countries with the greatest relative damage, and Kuwait, the UAE and Libya also appear among the 20 highest. Wetlands are the ecosystem type most exposed in proportional terms, with losses of about 2.2 percent under the highest-emissions scenario by 2100. Agricultural land and built-up areas together account for about 59 to 60 percent of the total economic value of the losses.

The authors are open about the limits. The estimates come from models, not from measured losses. The flood scenarios assume no coastal barriers and no future adaptation, coastal and inland wetlands are grouped into one category, and a single economic adjustment factor is applied to each country. The monetary figures are meant to support comparison between countries and to help set coastal protection priorities. They are not direct estimates of compensation costs or of actual human welfare losses.

Why it matters

The study sets what a country has contributed to warming against what it could lose, and that comparison sits behind much of the international debate on climate finance. Seeing both sets of numbers side by side gives planners, negotiators and investors a common basis for discussing where coastal protection is most needed. Because the figures are model estimates and assume no adaptation, they are best read as a way to rank exposure rather than as a forecast of losses.