Pacific island nations are ‘highly vulnerable,’ due to rising sea levels, UN official says

Highlighting the rapidly rising seas, especially in the most vulnerable Pacific island countries, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued another global SOS weather warning. This time he said those initials stand for “saving our oceans.”

The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization on Monday released reports on the worsening sea level rise, caused by global warming and the melting of ice and glaciers. They highlight how the Southwest Pacific is being harmed not only by rising seas, but also by other effects of climate change such as ocean acidification and ocean heat waves.

Guterres visited Samoa and Tonga and made his climate appeal in Tonga’s capital on Tuesday at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, whose member countries are among those most vulnerable to climate change. Next month the United Nations will hold a special meeting to discuss rising seas.

“This is a crazy situation,” Guterres said. “The rise of the seas is a problem that affects humanity as a whole. The problem will quickly escalate to an unimaginable scale, with no boat to take us back to safety.”

“A global crisis is putting this Pacific paradise at risk,” he said. “The sea overflows.”

A report commissioned by Guterres’ office found that sea levels in Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa rose by 21 centimeters (8.3 inches) between 1990 and 2020, twice the global average of 10 centimeters (3.9 inches). Apia, Samoa, saw a sea level rise of 31 centimeters, while Suva-B, Fiji saw 29 centimeters (11.4 inches).

“This puts Pacific Island nations in grave danger,” Guterres said. About 90% of the region’s population lives within five kilometers (3 miles) of rising seas, he said.

Since 1980, coastal flooding in Guam has jumped from twice a year to 22 times a year. It has gone from five times a year to 43 times a year in the Cook Islands. In Pago Pago, American Samoa, coastal flooding went from zero to 102 times a year, according to the WMO State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2023 report.

“Due to sea level rise, the ocean is changing from a lifelong friend to a growing threat,” Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, told reporters in Nuku’alofa on Tuesday.

While the western edges of the Pacific are seeing sea level rise at about twice the global average, the central Pacific is closer to the global average, the WMO said.

Sea levels are rising rapidly in the tropical western Pacific because of melting ice from west Antarctica, warmer water and ocean currents, UN officials said.

Guterres said he has seen a change since he was last in the region in May 2019.

While meeting in Nuku’alofa on Tuesday with the Pacific nations for the environment at the annual conference of their leaders, a hundred high school students and activists from all over the Pacific marched for climate justice in the neighborhood.

One of the marchers was Interunga Rae of the Barnaban Human Rights Defenders Network, whose people were forced generations ago to migrate to Fiji from their home on the island of Kiribati due to environmental degradation. Rae said leaving the Pacific islands should not be seen as a solution to rising seas.

“We promote climate change as a safety solution for your island ravaged by climate change, but it is not the safest option,” he said. Barnaba said they were cut off from the source of their culture and heritage.

“The alarm has a reason,” said S. Jeffress Williams, retired US Geological Survey sea level scientist. He said it’s worse in the Pacific islands because most of the islands are low-lying, so people are more likely to get hurt. Three outside experts said the sea level reports accurately reflect what is happening.

The Pacific is hit hard despite producing only 0.2% of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change and sea level rise, the UN said. Most of the sea level rise is from melting ice in Antarctica and Greenland. Melting glaciers add to that, and warm water also expands based on the laws of physics.

Antarctic and Greenland “melting has accelerated over the past thirty to four decades due to high levels of warming at the poles,” Williams, who was not part of the report, said in an email.

About 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases enters the ocean, the UN says.

Globally, sea level rise has been accelerating, says a UN report, echoing peer-reviewed studies. The rate is now the fastest in 3,000 years, Guterres said.

Between 1901 and 1971, the average global sea level rise was 1.3 centimeters per decade, according to a UN report. Between 1971 and 2006 it jumped to 1.9 centimeters per decade, then between 2006 and 2018 it reached 3.7 centimeters per decade. In the last decade, seas have risen 4.8 centimeters (1.9 inches).

The UN report also highlighted the cities in the 20 richest countries, which absorb 80% of greenhouse gases, where rising seas are filling most of the population. Those cities where sea level rise over the past 30 years has been at least 50% higher than the global average include Shanghai; Perth, Australia; London; Atlantic City, New Jersey; in Boston; Miami; and New Orleans.

New Orleans tops the list with 10.2 inches (26 centimeters) of sea level rise between 1990 and 2020. UN officials highlighted flooding in New York City during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 as worsened by rising seas. A 2021 study said climate-driven sea level rise added $8 billion to hurricane costs.

Guterres is stepping up his rhetoric on what he calls “climate chaos” and has urged rich countries to step up efforts to reduce carbon emissions, end fossil fuel use and help poorer countries. Yet countries’ energy plans show them producing twice the amount of fossil fuels by 2030 than the amount that will limit warming to internationally agreed levels, a 2023 UN report found.

Guterres said he expects the nations of the Pacific islands to “speak out clearly” at the next General Assembly, and because they have a small role in climate change, “they have the moral authority to ask those who are accelerating sea level rise to reverse these trends.”

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—Seth Borenstein and Charlotte Graham-McClay, Associated Press science writer