By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS | 27 August 2024 (IDN) — The world’s 39 small island developing states (SIDS), with an aggregate population of about 65 million, are battling a rash of social, economic and mostly environmental vulnerabilities.
According to the UN, the three geographical regions in which SIDS are located are: the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and South China Sea (AIS).
https://www.un.org/ohrlls/content/list-sids
During a visit to the Pacific Island of Tonga early this week, Secretary-General António Guterres warned of the growing problem of rising sea levels which he called SOS — Save Our Seas.
“A worldwide catastrophe is putting this Pacific paradise in peril. Global average sea levels are rising at rates unprecedented in the past 3,000 years. The ocean is overflowing”.
“The changes here in the Pacific region are visible since my last visit. And around the world, rising seas have unparalleled power to cause havoc to coastal cities and ravage coastal economies.”
The reason is clear: greenhouse gases—overwhelmingly generated by burning fossil fuels – are cooking our planet, he pointed out.
And the sea is taking the heat—literally, he said, and added: “It has absorbed more than 90 percent of global heating in the past fifty years.”
Tonga has a population of 104,494, 70% of whom reside on the main island, Tongatapu.
Meanwhile, the Indian Ocean island of the Maldives, categorized by the UN as a small island developing state (SIDS), and with a population of over 528,000, has for long been threatened with rising sea level– and in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth.
A growing number of SIDS, including Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Nauru and Kiribati, have made a strong case for a stand-alone goal for the protection of oceans in the UN’s development agenda known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a target date of 2030.
The World Bank once described the Maldives as a low-lying archipelago with more territorial sea than land, while being exposed to the risks of intensifying weather events. Sea level rise represents an existential threat to the country.
Besides tourism, one of the biggest foreign exchange earners for the Maldives was canned tuna fish comprising about 65.9% of total exports. The late Fathulla Jameel, the Permanent Representative of the Maldives to the UN and later the country’s Foreign Minister, was gifted with a sense of humor. Asked about the threat of sea level rise, he told me: “Our country is like a can of tuna fish. It comes with an expiry date.”
Asked about UN assistance to the beleaguered small islands in the Pacific, Guterres told reporters August 26: “I have a lot of confidence in the determination of Pacific Islands to speak loud and clear in the next General Assembly. We have seen that with sea level rise, the impact is particularly dramatic in Pacific Islands”.
And Pacific Islands, he pointed out, do not contribute to Climate Change, so they have a moral authority to ask those that are creating this in accelerating the sea level rise to reverse these trends. And we count on the leadership of Pacific Islands and will be fully supportive of their declaration.
He also told reporters: “I am totally committed to mobilize the new capacity that the UN has in the Pacific, to support Tonga, and to support all islands of the Pacific. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to see the inauguration of a meteorological radar that is part of the first line of protection, and it’s financed, essentially, by New Zealand.”
And Tonga will be equipped from now on to have an effective early warning system. So, we are very much willing to cooperate with the Government of Tonga to strengthen their capacity,” he declared.
Meanwhile, two UN reports released August 26, throw the situation into sharp relief: The World Meteorological Organization’s report on the State of the Climate in the South West Pacific; And the UN Climate Action Team’s new report summarizing the science: Surging seas in a warming world.
Taken together, said Guterres, they show that changes to the ocean are accelerating, with devastating impacts. Month after month, sea temperatures shatter records.
Marine heatwaves are more intense and longer-lasting – doubling its frequency since 1980.
And rising seas are amplifying the frequency and severity of storm surges and coastal flooding.
These floods swamp coastal communities. Ruin fisheries. Damage crops. And contaminate fresh water.
All this puts Pacific Islands in grave danger, he warned.
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 thirty years.
Ocean temperatures are increasing at up to three times the rate worldwide.
And Pacific islands are uniquely exposed.
This is a region with an average elevation just one to two meters above sea level;
Where around 90 percent of people live within 5 kilometers of the coast; And where half the infrastructure is within 500 metres of the sea.
Without drastic cuts in emissions, the Pacific Islands can expect at least 15 centimeters of additional sea level rise by mid-century, and more than 30 days per year of coastal flooding in some places. [IDN-InDepthNews]
Photo: Palau. Credit: Pablo Marx, Flickr
