U.N. Security Council warns of sea-level rise: 'A torrent of trouble'

The United Nations Security Council opened a debate on the security implications of sea-level rise with a stark warning from U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday morning.

“For the hundreds of millions of people living in small island developing states and other low-lying coastal areas around the world, sea-level rise is a torrent of trouble,” he said.

Guterres enumerated some of the basic necessities and economic activities threatened by rising tides, including “access to water, food and health care” and “key industries like agriculture, fisheries and tourism.”

The threat is intensified when combined with the extreme weather events that are more severe because of climate change, such as hurricanes that bring higher storm surges that can destroy key infrastructure, including hospitals and transportation systems — as 2012’s Hurricane Sandy demonstrated when it made landfall in New York City. Ultimately, entire cities and even countries may not survive, Guterres noted.

This could create destabilizing effects, as poor people lose their homes and poor countries lose their land, due to rich countries’ greenhouse gas emissions, potentially creating a wave of climate refugees.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the U.N.’s weather and climate tracking service, issued a report Tuesday morning to coincide with the Security Council session.

Thus far, the global average sea level increased by one-fifth of a meter — roughly 8 inches — between 1901 and 2018, according to the WMO. Half of the sea-level rise to date is from thermal expansion, meaning that water expands as it grows warmer, and the other half is from melting glaciers and ice sheets.

The pace of ascending ocean levels is getting much faster. The average rate of sea-level rise went from 1.3 millimeters per year before 1971 to 1.9 millimeters per year between 1971 and 2006. Between 2006 and 2018, it rose 3.7 millimeters per year.

But that’s nothing compared with what’s in store. Due to the time lag between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, and then between warming and glacial melting that causes the oceans to rise, humanity has already ensured that future sea-level rise will dwarf what has happened so far.

The WMO projects 3 to 5 feet of sea-level rise by 2100. “In less than 80 years, 250 million to 400 million people will likely need new homes in new locations,” U.N. General Assembly president Csaba Körösi noted in his remarks Tuesday morning.

“There are rules about the creation of a state but none about their disappearance,” Körösi said. “How would even the first changes of shorelines affect maritime borders?”

“Preserving or fixing or freezing the baselines and outer limits of maritime zones is crucial to legal stability and security,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu, speaking in his capacity as co-chair of the International Law Commission study group on sea-level rise.

Although nearly every nation agreed at the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, that limiting warming to 1.5°C is the goal, national pledges to reduce emissions put the world on pace for 2.2°C. And the policies actually in place point toward 2.7°C of warming by 2100.

That much warming would result in up to 20 feet of sea-level rise, the WMO reports. With that much increase, entire cities — including New Orleans and Miami — would be completely underwater. Even higher-elevation cities would face constant flooding and saltwater intrusion into their groundwater supplies.

Tuesday’s meeting was chaired by Ian Borg, Malta's minister for foreign and European affairs and trade, who circulated a brief in advance focusing on the risks posed to low-lying coastal communities and island states. Climate change also increases the risk that sea-level rise will worsen tensions over resources such as fresh water, the brief said. (Malta, a small island state in the Mediterranean, is undoubtedly paying close attention to such concerns.)

Tuesday’s meeting was the first open debate in the Security Council since 2015. In 2011 the council adopted a statement expressing concern over “possible security implications of loss of territory of some states,” but it has never taken any action to address climate change. China and Russia — permanent members of the Security Council who hold a veto over any proposal — have historically contended that climate change is best addressed in other U.N. forums.

In addition to calling for swift action to mitigate climate change and funding for developing countries to adapt to climate change and to compensate them for climate-change-related losses, Guterres called for the rich and powerful Security Council members such as the United States to find “innovative legal and practical solutions to address the impact of rising sea levels on forced human displacement and on the very existence of the land territory of some states.”

“People’s human rights do not disappear because their homes do,” he said.