Rising seas could wipe out entire countries, cause ‘biblical’ evacuations, UN chief says

Rising oceans could swallow entire countries, triggering mass evacuations on a “biblical scale,” the U.N. secretary warned.

The warming climate has melted glaciers around the world, causing sea levels to rise faster in the last century than at any 100-year period in the last 3,000 years, António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, said in a speech on Tuesday, Feb. 14, according to a transcript from the U.N.

“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,” Guterres said while addressing the U.N. Security Council during its first debate on rising sea levels.

Countries such as China, India, Bangladesh and the Netherlands and large coastal cities like New York, London and Buenos Aires, Argentina, are at risk of significant impacts, Guterres said, citing new data from the World Meteorological Organization.

The swelling seas have already forced residents of some Pacific Islands, including Fiji and the Solomon Islands, to move to higher ground, he said.

In order to stem the rising tide — or at least mitigate its effects — Guterres proposed several policy changes, including urging more action be taken to reduce carbon emissions.

“Our world is hurtling past the 1.5-degree warming limit that a livable future requires, and with present policies, is careening towards 2.8 degrees — a death sentence for vulnerable countries,” he said.

Additionally, early warning systems for natural disasters, such as glacial floods, should also be implemented, and international refugee law should be amended to address the looming wave of human displacement, he said.

The sea level has fluctuated greatly over the millennia, rising and falling by as much as 400 feet, Brian McNoldy, a researcher at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, told McClatchy News in an email.

“So the Earth is capable of a tremendous range, and with that, the coastlines have moved in and out by hundreds of miles,” McNoldy said. But, over the span of human civilization, a mere instant in the Earth’s history, sea levels have been relatively stationary.

“Now that sea level is beginning to rise rapidly again, the threat of inland-advancing coastlines is very real and is indeed a global crisis without an easy or obvious solution,” McNoldy said. “It will undoubtedly result in a mass exodus from the (current) coasts over a relatively short time.”

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