Newsman: The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a crisis of an “unimaginable scale” caused by greenhouse gases and rising sea levels, highlighting seas that are rising at an accelerating rate, especially in the far more vulnerable Pacific island nations. He was speaking at a at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum on Tuesday in Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa. He warned there was “no lifeboat to take us back to safety”.
UN chief issued climate SOS to the world which he said those initials stand for “save our seas.”
The UN secretary General is also expected to visit Samoa while he is in the Pacific. Next month the United Nations General Assembly holds a special session to discuss rising seas.
“This is a crazy situation: Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale,” he said. “The reason is clear: Greenhouse gases – overwhelmingly generated by burning fossil fuels – are cooking our planet. And the sea is taking the heat – literally.”
Nuku’alofa is hosting more than 1,000 international delegates for the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting until August 30. Climate change and its impact on the Pacific’s low-lying communities is high on the agenda at the gathering of regional officials, who lead some of the world’s most imperilled countries.
“Without drastic cuts to emissions, the Pacific Islands can expect at least 15 centimetres [6 inches] of additional sea level rise by mid-century, and more than 30 days per year of coastal flooding in some places,” he said. “But if we save the Pacific, we also save ourselves. The world must act and answer the SOS before it is too late.”
Guterres repeated his longstanding appeal to “the biggest emitters”, the Group of 20 (G20) nations, to financially support the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries.
“We need a surge in funds to deal with surging seas,” he said.
UN Secretary General Guterres’s comments came as two UN agencies published stark reports warning of worsening sea level rises on Monday. A World Meteorological Organization report on rising sea levels in the Pacific and a UN Climate Action Team report on surging seas in a warming world both “throw the situation into sharp relief”, Guterres said.
“Today’s reports confirm that relative sea levels in the Southwestern Pacific have risen even more than the global average – in some locations, by more than double the global increase in the past 30 years,” Guterres said.
Globally, sea level rise has been accelerating, the UN report said, echoing peer-reviewed studies. The rate is now the fastest it has been in 3,000 years, Guterres said.
The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization Monday issued reports on worsening sea level rise, turbocharged by a warming Earth and melting ice sheets and glaciers. They highlight how the Southwestern Pacific is not only hurt by the rising oceans, but by other climate change effects of ocean acidification and marine heat waves.
The Climate Action Team report found that sea levels in Nuku’alofa had risen 21 centimetres (8.3 inches) between 1990 and 2020, more than twice the global average of 10 centimetres (3.9 inches).
The UN General Assembly is set to hold a special session to discuss the existential threat posed by rising sea levels on September 25th.
UN Secretary General Guterres said he expects Pacific island nations to “speak loud and clear” in the next General Assembly, and because they contribute so little to climate change, “they have a moral authority to ask those that are creating accelerating the sea level rise to reverse these trends.”
