United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres was sending out an SOS — ‘Save Our Seas’ — this week as he warned that Pacific Island nations risk sinking below the waves if developed nations fail to stop burning fossil fuels.Speaking at a gathering of Pacific Island regional leaders in the Tongan capital Nuku’alofa, he warned there was “no lifeboat to take us back to safety.”.The cause? Fossil fuels, of course.Nuku’alofa is hosting more than 1,000 international delegates for the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting all this week. There, they will discuss the impact of climate change and rising sea levels on low lying communities scattered throughout the world’s largest ocean.By Guterres’ remarks, one could almost feel the waters rising over the tops of his Berluti wing-tip shoes.“This is a crazy situation: Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale,” he said. “The reason is clear: Greenhouse gases — overwhelmingly generated by burning fossil fuels — are cooking our planet. And the sea is taking the heat — literally.”.Guterres has previously warned that with 90% of people living within 5 kilometres of a coastline at an elevation of just one to 1-2 metres above sea level, the “Pacific islands are uniquely exposed.”“Without drastic cuts to emissions, the Pacific Islands can expect at least 15 centimetres of additional sea level rise by mid-century, and more than 30 days per year of coastal flooding in some places,” he said. “The world must act and answer the SOS before it is too late.”Guterres blamed the usual suspects — the G20 nations of the world’s most developed economies — for failing to take action to support the planet’s most vulnerable countries with financial aid..A report by the UN’s Climate Action Team on Monday found that sea levels in Nuku’alofa had risen 21 centimetres between 1990 and 2020, more than twice the global average of 10 centimetres.The UN General Assembly is set to hold a special session to discuss the “existential threat” posed by rising sea levels on September 25.“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 30 years,” Guterres said.
