CLIMATE: UN chief says rising seas a ‘death sentence’ for some countries

In light of recent data showing that sea levels have increased quickly since 1900, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued a warning about the threat that rising sea levels pose to hundreds of millions of people who live in low-lying coastal areas and small island states.

In a forceful speech to the first UN Security Council discussion on the effects of rising sea levels on international peace and security, Guterres stated that major cities like Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Jakarta, Lagos, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Maputo, New York, and Shanghai as well as nations like Bangladesh, China, India, and the Netherlands were also in danger.

One in ten people on Earth, or nearly 900 million, live in coastal areas with low altitudes, making them particularly vulnerable, he told the council on Tuesday.

According to NASA, the melting of glaciers and ice sheets caused by climate change has caused Antarctica to lose an average of 150 billion tonnes of ice mass year. The ice cap of Greenland is vanishing much more quickly, losing 270 billion tonnes annually.

According to the UN chief, the ocean has warmed up more quickly during the past century than it has in the previous 11,000 years.

With current policies, the world is careening toward 2.8 degrees of warming, which would be a death sentence for vulnerable nations. “Our world is hurtling past the 1.5-degree warming limit that a liveable future requires,” he said.

According to Guterres, ensuring that the $100 billion climate finance promise to developing nations is fulfilled will help ensure that developing countries, in particular, have the resources they need to adapt to a world that is changing quickly.

The head of the UN gave examples of how communities and nations in the Pacific to the Himalayan river basins have been impacted by global warming and increasing sea levels.