The UN Secretary-General warns that low-lying communities and entire countries could disappear under rising sea levels.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of the threat posed by sea-level rise for hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying coastal areas and small island nations, as new data shows seas have been rising rapidly since 1900.
In a sharp speech ahead of the UN Security Council’s first debate on the impact of sea-level rise on international peace and security, Guterres said countries like Bangladesh, China, India and the Netherlands are under threat, as are big cities like Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Jakarta, Lagos, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Maputo, New York and Shanghai.
“The danger is particularly acute for nearly 900 million people living in coastal areas at low elevations – that’s one in ten people on Earth,” he told the council on Tuesday.
Climate change is heating the planet and melting glaciers and ice sheets, which NASA says has caused Antarctica to shed an average of about 150 billion tons of ice mass each year, Guterres said. Greenland’s ice cap is shrinking even faster, losing 270 billion tons a year.
“The global ocean has warmed faster in the past century than at any time in the last 11,000 years,” said the UN chief.
“Our world is hurtling past the 1.5 degree warming threshold required for a future worth living and is fast approaching 2.8 degrees with current policies – a death sentence for vulnerable countries,” he said.
Developing countries in particular must have the resources to adapt to a rapidly changing world, and that means making sure the $100 billion climate finance commitment for developing countries is met, Guterres said.
The UN chief gave examples of the impact of a warming planet and rising sea levels on communities and countries stretching from the Pacific to the Himalayan river basins.
Melting ice in the Himalayas has already worsened flooding in Pakistan, he said. But as Himalayan glaciers recede in the coming decades, the mighty Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers will shrink. Hundreds of millions of people living in the Himalayan river basins will suffer the effects of both rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion, Guterres said.
“We see similar threats in the Mekong Delta and beyond. The consequences of all this are unthinkable. Low-lying communities and entire countries could disappear forever,” he said.
“We would see a mass exodus of entire populations on biblical proportions.”
With rising sea levels creating new theaters of conflict as competition for freshwater sources and land intensifies, the secretary-general said the climate crisis must be tackled at its root: cutting emissions to limit warming. Understanding the link between insecurity and a changing climate also requires early warning systems for natural disasters to be developed, and legal and human rights provisions are also required, particularly to counteract displacement of people and loss of territory.
“People’s human rights don’t go away because their homes go away,” Guterres said.
At the Security Council meeting, speakers from about 75 countries expressed their concerns about the impact of sea level rise, the Associated Press reported.
Speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States, Samoa’s Ambassador to the UN, Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Pa’olelei Luteru, said Alliance members are among the countries that emit the least greenhouse gases that cause global warming and climate change.
“Yet we are facing some of the most serious consequences of sea level rise,” Lutero said, according to the AP.
“To expect small island nations to bear the burden of sea-level rise without help from the international community will be the height of injustice,” he said.
Ambassador Amatlain Kabua of the Marshall Islands said many of the tools to combat climate change and sea rise are already known.
“What is needed most is the political will to get to work, backed by a UN special envoy,” to spur global action, she said.