Some 16% of the mapped area of China's major cities is sinking 'rapidly' ' faster than 10 millimetres every year. An even greater area, roughly 45%, is sinking at a 'moderate' rate, the paper says, meaning a downward trajectory of greater than 3 mm annually. Affected cities include the capital Beijing, as well as megacities, including Tianjin, Hefei and Xi'an. The situation could see one-quarter of China's coastal lands slip below sea level within a few decades, posing 'serious threats' to the hundreds of millions of people who live on the coast, the paper notes. In the famously low-lying Netherlands, roughly one-quarter of the land has subsided to below sea level. And by 2040, almost one-fifth of the world's population is projected to be living on sinking land. In the United States, more than 44,000 square kilometres of land across 45 states has been directly affected by subsidence, with more than 80% of the cases relating to groundwater extraction, often for agricultural purposes....
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