Resilient Economies Strategies for Sinking Cities and Flood Risks 2025

Key drivers explained: Value land and water as strategic assets: Human activities are the primary drivers of subsidence. Addressing sinking challenges requires a fundamental shift in how land and water are valued and used in urban planning, economic development and sustainability practices. Future growth must prioritize these resources as finite and critical assets, embedding resource-conscious practices to reduce subsidence risks, and compounding risks through its interplay with climate change. By prioritizing the stewardship of these resources, stakeholders can help secure their availability, quality and quantity for current and future generations. Enable systems thinking: Adopting a systems approach is essential to understand the complex interdependencies, behaviours and feedback loops between human activities, natural assets and their economic, social and environmental impacts. By committing to best practices in systems thinking, leaders can move beyond fragmented policies, data and solutions, enabling the development of integrated and effective strategies. This perspective can support the design, maintenance and adaptive reuse of built environments to better withstand subsidence and compounding risks. It can also encourage innovation and enable more effective targeting of investments, ensuring that urban development is resilient, resource-efficient and aligned with sustainability goals. Focus on prevention and mitigation: Proactive strategies must address the root causes of land subsidence and create interventions to reduce risks and costs through a holistic, systems approach. This includes accounting for the interplay between subsidence, sea-level rise and extreme weather, as these factors can amplify risks together. To ensure interventions are comprehensive and sustainable, effective mitigation efforts should be integrated into broader urban and environmental planning frameworks. Strengthen adaptation and resilience: Building the capacity of cities, economies and communities to anticipate, withstand and adapt to evolving risks is essential. Comprehensive strategies should address the combined effects of subsidence and climate change. By advancing the ability to withstand shocks, stakeholders can minimize risks, enable rapid recovery and enhance the overall resilience of urban systems. Encourage strong governance and leadership: Effective governance and strong leadership are foundational for building urban resilience in places impacted by subsidence and climate extremes. Demonstrated commitment at national, regional and local levels serves as a catalyst for transformative change, enabling cross-sector and cross-community engagement. Governance frameworks should be guided by principles of collaboration, sustainability, efficiency, scalability, equity, accountability and transparency. Multistakeholder collaboration is indispensable, as no single actor can address the multifaceted risks of subsidence alone. Given the close link between subsidence and groundwater use, ensuring equitable access to sustainable surface water sources is critical to reducing pressure on groundwater resources and curbing illegal extraction. Governance should ensure that prevention to resilience plans extend beyond city boundaries, recognizing that activities in one area can have unintended consequences elsewhere. A coordinated, cohesive approach can enable comprehensive resilience planning, establishment of clear benchmarks and facilitation of knowledge-sharing. Evidence-based decisions: Commit to using evidence to guide decisions on addressing subsidence. Accurate and reliable quantitative and qualitative data can inform policies, best practices and solutions. It can help combat misinformation, enable informed communication and knowledge sharing and build accountability. This approach strengthens the foundation for impactful action and can promote trust across sectors. By committing to best practices in systems thinking, leaders can move beyond fragmented policies, data and solutions, enabling the development of integrated and sustainable strategies. Resilient Economies: Strategies for Sinking Cities and Flood Risks 32