moreover addressing the structural inequalities that perpetuate social exclusion and vulnerability requires integrated and coherent policies which are consistent over time policymakers increasingly recognize this challenge and the need to focus on immediate and nearfuture decisions that have longerterm impacts while maintaining the flexibility needed to adjust to changing conditions and information a recent report on the melting of the west antarctic ice sheet for example found that sea levels will possibly have risen by as much as three feet by the end of the century with severe implications for the world s coastal cities gillis this new estimate of the speed of sealevel rise yields roughly twice the increase expected under the plausible worstcase scenario produced by ipcc in church and others rapid improvements in climate technologies is facilitating new assessments better environment statistics and more information although important gaps do remain see chaps