England must spend up to 9 billion pounds ($17 billion) bolstering flood defences against a predicted 40 cm (15.75 inch) rise in sea levels due to global warming, insurers said on Tuesday, according to Reuters. Without work to defend London and England's exposed east coast, the cost of damage from a single major flood could be as high as 16 billion pounds, they said in a report "Coastal flood risk-Thinking for tomorrow, acting today". Central London and its economically vital finance district lies is especially vulnerable to flooding. "This report shows that Britain needs a sustained and prolonged investment in coastal flood defences," said Association of British Insurers' (ABI) head Stephen Haddrill. "This investment needs to start now," he told an ABI meeting in central London. Scientists say global average temperatures could rise by between two and six degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels over the coming century due mainly to so-called greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels for power and transport. Global warming would cause more extreme weather events such as storms and droughts and also start to melt the giant polar ice caps, putting millions more people in coastal areas at risk from rising sea levels. TIDAL SURGE Environment Minister David Miliband told the meeting everything was being done to mitigate the effects of climate change and adapt to their consequences. "The transition to a low-carbon economy is the biggest industrial reorganisation since the industrial revolution. But we have to de-carbonise at 10 times the rate that we carbonised," he said. The ABI report used catastrophe modelling techniques to calculate the effects of a sea level rise of 40 cm as early as 2040. On Tuesday, Miliband's ministry issued its own new sea level predictions saying the average rate of increase would rise from between 2.5 and 4.0 millimetres a year now to between 13.0 and 15.0 mm between 2085 and 2115. London's major flood defence is the 23-year-old Thames Barrier. It is now being closed on average some seven times a year but is expected to be shut more than twice a month by the time it reaches the end of its projected design life in 2030. Possibilities, including a new barrier further downstream and removing some farmland flood defences in the estuary to stop surges being channelled up the river, are being considered. The ABI report said up to 4 billion pounds had to be spent on improving the Thames Barrier and central London's flood defences, with an extra 2 billion pounds on the tidal flood plain to the seaward side of the barrier. Along the east coast -- inundated by the storm surge floods of 1953 which killed more than 300 people -- flood defence spending of up to 2.6 billion pounds was needed.
