23 March 2023 – by Cosmo Sanderson
United Nations secretary general António Guterres has warned that rising sea levels could cause climate migration on a “biblical scale”, with the current rate of global warming representing a “death sentence” for entire countries.
Addressing the 15-member UN Security Council in New York last month, Guterres once again sounded the alarm bell for the “unthinkable” consequences of rapidly melting ice sheets and glaciers.
Antarctica and the Greenland ice cap are now between them losing 420 billion tons of ice mass annually according to US space agency NASA, he said.
The resulting sea level rise could cause low-lying communities and entire countries to “disappear forever,” Guterres told the Council. There would also be “ever-fiercer competition for fresh water, land and other resources.”
Addressing the “root cause” of rising seas, the climate crisis, Guterres said the world is currently “hurtling past the 1.5°C warming limit that a liveable future requires” — a limit that would still see sizeable sea-level rise.
“Every fraction of a degree counts,” said Guterres. “If temperatures rise by 2 degrees, that level rise could double”. Currently the world is “careening towards 2.8°C — a death sentence for vulnerable countries.”
“Under any scenario,” Guterres said that countries like Bangladesh, China, India and the Netherlands are all at risk. And mega-cities on every continent will face “serious impacts”, including Lagos, London, Mumbai, New York and Buenos Aires.
The danger is “especially acute” for nearly 900 million people who live in coastal zones at low elevations, said Guterres. “That is one out of ten people on earth.”
Guterres stressed that the effects of global warming are already being felt. Himalayan melts have worsened flooding in Pakistan, he said, while also citing flooding in West Africa, such as that suffered recently in Nigeria.
The impacts of rising seas must also be addressed, including international refugee law, he said. “People’s human rights do not disappear because their homes do.”
The International Law Commission had last year considered a “range of potential solutions” to the problems caused by rising sea levels, including continuing statehood despite loss of territory, ceding or assigning portions of territory to an affected state, or even establishing confederations of states.
Guterres’ latest dire warning on the climate comes as even half-hearted efforts to address global warming have been hampered by the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which have diverted political attention from the issue.
Last year, he said the world was “sleepwalking to climate catastrophe”, with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C – as set out in the 2015 Paris agreement – on “life support”.
