NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga (AP) — Stressing that seas are rising rapidly, especially in the more vulnerable Pacific island nations, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued another climate SOS to the world. This time, he said the initials mean “save our seas.”
The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization released reports Monday on worsening sea-level rise, accelerated by a warming Earth and melting ice sheets and glaciers. They highlight how the southwestern Pacific is suffering not only from rising oceans but also from other climate change impacts such as ocean acidification and marine heat waves.
Guterres toured Samoa and Tonga and made his climate plea from Tonga’s capital on Tuesday at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, whose member states are among the hardest hit by climate change. The United Nations General Assembly is holding a special session next month to discuss rising seas.
“This is crazy,” Guterres said. “Rising seas are a crisis of purely human creation. A crisis that will soon reach an almost unimaginable scale, and there will be no lifeboat to get us back to safety.”
“A world-wide disaster is endangering this Pacific paradise,” he said. “The ocean is overflowing.”
According to a report commissioned by Guterres’ office, sea levels hitting Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa rose by 21 centimeters (8.3 inches) between 1990 and 2020. That’s twice the global average of 10 centimeters (3.9 inches). Sea levels in Apia, Samoa, rose by 31 centimeters (1 foot), while in Suva-B, Fiji, they rose by 29 centimeters (11.4 inches).
“This puts Pacific Island countries in serious danger,” Guterres said. He said about 90% of the region’s people live within 5 kilometres (3 miles) of rising oceans.
Since 1980, coastal flooding on Guam has increased from twice a year to 22 times a year. In the Cook Islands, it has increased from five to 43 times a year. In Pago Pago, American Samoa, coastal flooding has increased from zero to 102 times a year, according to the WMO’s State of the Climate in the Southwest Pacific 2023 report.
“The ocean is turning from a lifelong friend into an increasing threat due to sea level rise,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo told reporters in Nuku’alofa on Tuesday.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) noted that sea level rose about twice as much as the global average along the western coast of the Pacific Ocean, but sea level in the central part of the Pacific Ocean was closer to the global average.
Sea levels are rising faster in the western tropical Pacific because of warmer waters and ocean currents directed by melting glaciers from West Antarctica, UN officials said.
Guterres said he had seen changes since he was last in the region in May 2019.
As Pacific leaders gathered for their annual summit on the environment in Nuku’alofa on Tuesday, hundreds of high school students and activists from across the Pacific marched for climate justice a few blocks away.
One of those who joined the march was Itinterunga Rae, from the Barnaban Human Rights Defenders Network, who was forced to move from their home on the island of Kiribati to Fiji generations ago because of environmental degradation. She said leaving the Pacific islands should not be seen as a solution to rising seas.
“We support climate mobility as a solution to be safe from your island being destroyed by climate change, but it is not the safest option,” he said. The Barnabans have been cut off from the source of their culture and heritage, he said.
“The alarm is justified,” said S. Jeffress Williams, a retired U.S. Geological Survey sea level scientist. He said it was particularly bad for the Pacific islands because many of them are at lower elevations, making people more likely to be injured. Three outside experts said the sea level reports accurately reflect what happened.
The Pacific is taking a hard hit, the UN said, despite producing just 0.2% of the heat-trapping gases that cause climate change and expanding oceans. The biggest part of sea rise is caused by melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. Melting land glaciers are adding to that, and warmer water is also expanding according to the laws of physics.
“Melting in Antarctica and Greenland has accelerated greatly over the last three to four decades due to the high rate of warming at the poles,” Williams, who was not involved in the reports, said in an emailed statement.
The UN reports that about 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans.
The UN report echoed peer-reviewed studies, saying sea level rise globally was accelerating. Guterres said the rate was now at its fastest rate for 3,000 years.
According to the UN report, between 1901 and 1971, the global average sea level rose by 1.3 centimeters (1.0 centimeters) per decade. It jumped to 1.9 centimeters (1.0 centimeters) per decade between 1971 and 2006, then rose to 3.7 centimeters (1.0 centimeters) per decade between 2006 and 2018. In the past decade, seas have risen by 4.8 centimeters (1.9 inches).
The UN report also highlighted cities in the 20 richest countries, which account for 80% of the heat-trapping gases, as rising seas crash into major population centres. Cities where sea levels have been at least 50% higher than the global average over the past 30 years include Shanghai; Perth, Australia; London; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Boston; Miami; and New Orleans.
New Orleans topped the list, with 10.2 inches (26 centimeters) of sea level rise between 1990 and 2020. U.N. officials noted that flooding in New York City during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 was made worse by rising seas. A 2021 study said climate-induced sea level rise added $8 billion to the storm’s costs.
Guterres has been stepping up his rhetoric about what he calls “climate chaos” and has called on richer countries to step up efforts to reduce carbon emissions, phase out fossil fuel use and help poorer countries. But countries’ energy plans show they are producing twice as much fossil fuel as would limit warming to internationally agreed levels by 2030, a 2023 UN report found.
Guterres said he expected Pacific island countries to “speak loudly and clearly” at the next General Assembly, saying they “have the moral mandate to ask those accelerating sea level rise to reverse those trends” because they contribute so little to climate change.
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Borenstein reported from Kensington, Maryland.
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