António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has warned that sea level rise poses an existential threat to many communities and could trigger a “mass exodus” of “biblical proportions”. The United Nations Security Council met on Tuesday to discuss the impact of sea level rise on peace and security.
According to the UN Secretary-General, rising sea levels could cause low-lying communities and entire countries to disappear forever. This is the case in Bangladesh, China, India and the Netherlands. Impacts may also affect megacities on every continent, including Cairo, Lagos, Maputo, Bangkok, Dhaka, Jakarta, Mumbai, Shanghai, Copenhagen, London, Los Angeles, New York, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile.
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For Guterres, the rise in water, accelerated by the climate crisis, is both a problem in itself and a “multiplier” of other threats and is already creating “new sources of instability and conflict”.
Guterres warns that this could pose an existential problem for some countries
The indirect consequences of rising sea levels endanger access to water, food and medical care, as the UN Secretary-General emphasized. And he added that “saltwater intrusion can decimate jobs and entire economies in key industries like agriculture, fishing and tourism.”
The Chair explained that if the most alarming forecasts by scientific organizations come true, the phenomenon could pose an existential problem for some communities and countries.
“The danger is particularly great for the almost 900 million people who live in low-lying coastal areas, i.e. one in ten people on earth,” says Guterres.
For all these reasons, the Portuguese diplomat has called on the international community to take decisive action in three main areas: fighting global warming, protecting vulnerable communities and amending international legislation to protect displaced people.
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