UNITED NATIONS Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that Pacific islands and the world at large are facing a “global catastrophe” due to rising sea levels, urging the world to respond to the unprecedented and devastating impacts before it is “too late.”
In a statement from the island nation of Tonga on Tuesday, Guterres issued a global SOS – “Save Our Oceans” – and called on the world to “massively scale up funding and support for vulnerable countries” in dire straits from the human-caused climate crisis.
“The oceans are rising,” Guterres said. “This is a crazy situation: Sea level rise is a crisis entirely made by humans. It will soon balloon to a scale almost unimaginable, with no lifeboats to take us back to safety.”
Guterres’ warning came at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, and coincided with the release of two UN reports detailing how the climate crisis is accelerating catastrophic changes in the oceans.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), sea surface temperatures in the Southwest Pacific have risen three times faster than the global average since 1980. And sea levels in the region have risen almost twice as fast as the global average in the past 30 years.
The report also said that during that period, marine heatwaves had become twice as frequent, more intense and longer.
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The oceans have absorbed 90% of the global warming caused by humans burning fossil fuels that release heat-trapping pollution, the report said. This ocean warming is fueling sea level rise, as water expands when warm, and melting ice sheets and glaciers add volume.
Most Vulnerable
Pacific islands face greater impacts than most, suffering the “triple whammy” of ocean warming, sea level rise, and acidification, which is damaging ecosystems, destroying crops, polluting freshwater sources, and destroying livelihoods.
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Worsening floods and tropical storms are already devastating the islands. The report said that in 2023, 34 “hydrometeorological hazard events” mostly related to storms or floods caused more than 200 deaths and affected 25 million people in the region.
“The ocean is undergoing changes that will be irreversible for centuries,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “Human activities are weakening the ocean’s capacity to support and protect us and turning a lifelong friend into a growing threat.”
In a second report published Tuesday, the UN climate action team said the climate crisis and rising sea levels were “no longer a distant threat,” especially for the Pacific.
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The Pacific islands contribute just 0.02% of global emissions but are “uniquely exposed,” Guterres said. “This is a region with an average elevation of just 1 to 2 meters above sea level, where about 90% of the population lives within 5 kilometers of the coast, and where half of the infrastructure is within 500 meters of the sea,” he said.
If the world continues on track to warm by 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, Pacific islands could expect at least an additional 15 centimeters of sea level rise by 2050 and more than 30 days of coastal flooding per year, the report said.
In 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that it was undeniable that humans had caused the climate crisis and that “widespread and rapid changes” had occurred, some of which were irreversible.
Tuesday’s report said, “emerging research on climate ‘tipping points’ and ice sheet dynamics is raising concerns among scientists that future sea level rise could be much larger and occur more rapidly than previously thought.”
While Pacific islands face “severe and disproportionate” impacts from sea-level rise, it is a global problem that poses “significant risks to the safety, security and sustainability of many low-lying islands, densely populated coastal megacities, large tropical agricultural deltas and Arctic communities,” the climate leaders said.
Both reports call on global leaders to improve early warning systems for vulnerable communities, significantly increase funding for resilience and adaptation, and make deep, rapid and urgent emissions cuts to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius — the critical threshold agreed by world leaders to avoid catastrophic climate impacts.
“The rising tide is coming for all of us,” Guterres said. “The world must look to the Pacific and listen to science… if we save the Pacific, we save ourselves.” (CNN/Z-3)
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