Update 2: November 15, 2001-2
Copyright © 2001 Earth Policy Institute
Rising Sea Level Forcing Evacuation of Island
Country
The leaders of Tuvalu—a
tiny island country in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia—have
conceded defeat in their battle with the rising sea, announcing that they
will abandon their homeland. After being rebuffed by Australia, the Tuvaluans
asked New Zealand to accept its 11,000 citizens, but it has not agreed
to do so.
During the twentieth century, sea level rose by 20-30 centimeters (8-12
inches). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects a rise
of up to 1 meter during this century. Sea level is rising because of the
melting of glaciers and the thermal expansion of the ocean as a result
of climate change. This in turn is due to rising atmospheric levels of
CO2, largely from burning fossil fuels.
As sea level has risen, Tuvalu has experienced lowland flooding. Saltwater
intrusion is adversely affecting its drinking water and food production.
Coastal erosion is eating away at the nine islands that make up the country.
The higher temperatures that are raising sea level also lead to more destructive
storms. Higher surface water temperatures in the tropics and subtropics
mean more energy radiating into the atmosphere to drive storm systems.
Paani Laupepa, a Tuvaluan government official, reports an unusually high
level of tropical cyclones during the last decade. (Tropical cyclones
are called hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.)
Laupepa is bitterly critical of the United States for abandoning the Kyoto
Protocol, the international agreement to reduce carbon emissions. He told
a BBC reporter that "by refusing to ratify the Protocol, the U.S. has
effectively denied future generations of Tuvaluans their fundamental freedom
to live where our ancestors have lived for thousands of years."
For the leaders of island countries, this is not a new issue. In October
1987, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the Maldives, noted in an impassioned
address to the United Nations General Assembly that his country was threatened
by rising sea level. In his words, his country of 311,000 was "an endangered
nation." With most of its 1,196 tiny islands barely 2 meters above sea
level, the Maldives' survival would be in jeopardy with even a 1-meter
rise in sea level in the event of a storm surge.
Tuvalu is the first country where people are trying to evacuate because
of rising seas, but it almost certainly will not be the last. It is seeking
a home for 11,000 people, but what about the 311,000 who may be forced
to leave the Maldives? Or the millions of others living in low-lying countries
who may soon join the flow of climate refugees? Who will accept them?
Will the United Nations be forced to develop a climate-immigrant quota
system, allocating the refugees among countries according to the size
of their population? Or will the allocation be according to the contribution
of individual countries to the climate change that caused the displacement?
Feeling threatened by the climate change over which they have little control,
the island countries have organized into an Alliance of Small Island States,
a group formed in 1990 specifically to lobby on behalf of these countries
vulnerable to climate change.
In addition to island nations, low-lying coastal countries are also threatened
by rising sea level. In 2000 the World Bank published a map showing that
a 1-meter rise in sea level would inundate half of Bangladesh's riceland.
(See map p 36 in Ch 2 of Eco-Economy.)
With a rise in sea level of up to 1 meter forecast for this century, Bangladeshis
would be forced to migrate not by the thousands but by the millions. In
a country with 134 million people—already
one of the most densely populated on the earth—this
would be a traumatic experience. Where will these climate refugees go?
Rice-growing river floodplains in other Asian countries would also be
affected, including India, Thailand, Viet Nam, Indonesia, and China. With
a 1-meter rise in sea level, more than a third of Shanghai would be under
water. For China as a whole, 70 million people would be vulnerable to
a 100-year storm surge.
The most easily measured effect of rising sea level is the inundation
of coastal areas. Donald F. Boesch, with the University of Maryland Center
for Environmental Sciences, estimates that for each millimeter rise in
sea level, the shoreline retreats an average of 1.5 meters. Thus if sea
level rises by 1 meter, coastline will retreat by 1,500 meters, or nearly
a mile.
With such a rise, the United States would lose 36,000 square kilometers
(14,000 square miles) of land—with
the middle Atlantic and Mississippi Gulf states losing the most. Large
portions of Lower Manhattan and the Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C.,
would be flooded with seawater during a 50-year storm surge.
A team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has calculated Massachusetts's
loss of land to the rising sea as warming progresses. Using the rather
modest U.S. Environmental Protection Agency projections of sea level rise
by 2025, they calculated that Massachusetts would lose from 7,500 to 10,000
acres (3,035 to 4,047 hectares) of land. Based on just the lower estimate
and a nominal land value of $1 million per acre for ocean-front property,
this would amount to a loss of at least $7.5 billion of particularly expensive
property by then. Some of the 72 coastal communities included in the study
would lose far more land than others. Nantucket could lose over 6 acres
and Falmouth 3.8 acres a year.
Coastal real estate prices are likely to be one of the first economic
indicators to reflect the rise in sea level. Those with heavy investments
in beachfront properties will suffer most. A half-meter rise in sea level
in the United States could bring losses ranging from $20 billion to $150
billion. Beachfront properties, much like nuclear power plants, are becoming
uninsurable—as many homeowners in Florida
have discovered.
Many developing countries already coping with population growth and intense
competition for living space and cropland now face the prospect of rising
sea level and substantial land losses. Some of those most directly affected
have contributed the least to the buildup in atmospheric CO2
that is causing this problem.
While Americans are facing loss of valuable beachfront properties, low-lying
island peoples are facing something far more serious: the loss of their
nationhood. They feel terrorized by U.S. energy policy, viewing the United
States as a rogue nation, indifferent to their plight and unwilling to
cooperate with the international community to implement the Kyoto Protocol.
For the first time since civilization began, sea level has begun to rise
at a measurable rate. It has become an indicator to watch, a trend that
could force a human migration of almost unimaginable dimensions. It also
raises questions about responsibility to other nations and to future generations
that humanity has never before faced.
Copyright © 2001 Earth Policy Institute
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
From Earth Policy Institute
Lester R. Brown, Eco-Economy:
Building an Economy for the Earth (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
2001).
Lester R. Brown, “Climate Change Has World Skating on Thin Ice,”
Earth Policy Alert, 29 August
2001.
From Other Sources
Seth Dunn, “Global Temperature Steady” and “Carbon Emissions Continue Decline,” in Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2001: The Trends that are Shaping Our Future (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), pp. 50-53.
IPCC, Climate Change 2001. Contributions of Working Groups I, II, and II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press). Text and summaries available at http://www.ipcc.ch.
James E. Neuman, et al., Sea Level Rise and Global
Climate Change: A Review of Impacts to U.S. Coasts (Arlington, VA:
Pew Center on Global Climate Change, February 2000). Available at
http://www.earthscape.org/p1/nej01/
LINKS
Alliance of Small Island States
http://www.sidsnet.org/aosis
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
http://www.giss.nasa.gov
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
http://www.ipcc.ch
Small Island Developing States Network
http://www.sidsnet.org
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
http://www.unfccc.de
Worldwatch Institute, Climate Mini Site
http://www.worldwatch.org/topics/climate.html