Low-Lying Pacific Islands Pin Hopes on UN Meeting as Sea Rise Threatens Survival (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0175122971
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/24/1618221/low-lying-pacific-islands-pin-hopes-on-un-meeting-as-sea-rise-threatens-survival
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/24/low-lying-pacific-islands-sea-level-rise-un-meeting
> The Pacific country of Kiribati might be surrounded by water, but on land its population is running dry. The ocean around them is steadily encroaching, contaminating underground wells and leeching salt into the soil. "Our waters have been infected," climate activist and law student Christine Tekanene says. "Those who are affected, they now can't survive with the water that changed after sea level rise." The freshwater crisis is just one of the many threats driven by rising seas in Kiribati. Its people live on a series of atolls, peaking barely a couple of metres above a sprawling tract of the Pacific Ocean. As global temperatures rise and ice sheets melt, Kiribati -- and other low-lying nations like it -- are experiencing extreme and regular flooding, frequent coastal erosion and persistent food and water insecurity.
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> This week the United Nations general assembly will hold a high-level meeting to address the existential threats posed by sea level rise as the issue climbs the international agenda; last year the UN security council debated it for the first time. Wednesday's meeting aims to build political consensus on action to address the widespread social, economic and legal consequences of rising seas. Samoa's UN representative, Fatumanava Dr Pa'olelei Luteru, says the upcoming UN meeting is long overdue and "extremely important" for island nations. "Economically, militarily, we're not powerful," says Luteru, who also serves as the current chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). "At least within the context of the UN and the multilateral system we have the possibility and the opportunity to engage and achieve some of the things that are a priority for us."
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/24/low-lying-pacific-islands-sea-level-rise-un-meeting
Doomed (Score:4, Insightful)
This islands are doomed. The only solution is to move their populations somewhere else where they will be welcome. Good luck on that! But since there is no chance that climate change will reverse itself due to all the CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere by the industrialized world, I don't see any alternative. In the mean time, I hope these people can swim!
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Literally in times past when this happened the population would head out in to open seas to find a new place to live. Many would die but sometimes a suitable new location would be found and civilization starts again.
Though there is a reason why there are no global powers on tiny islands in the middle of the ocean. They're unsuitable for growth and technology. The fact that anything can live on them at all is a miracle and testament to the power of life.
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Irrelevant.
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I believe that you are thinking of Tuvalu. The whole thing here I suspect is that they have got some NGOs who probably are paid by their own government to look deep into the problem and find that they need a lot more money to look deeper into the problem in an on going cycle. Any money assigned will probably be grants and give zero help to the actual people but a whole lot of money to a train of consultants etc It is the successful business of climate scam and many others (with the worst being defense or wa
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yes, and other islands that have grown surface area, and you're correct that the growth of NGO consultation grants far exceeds any human benefit to the citizens and residents of those tiny nations. doubtless the presidents and governors are living high on the hog from that too.
Got to face reality (Score:3)
At a certain point you just have to face the fact that you all need to move instead of trying to stop the ocean.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
They're not doing anything to try to stop the ocean. They're trying to guilt everyone else in the world into paying them reparations.
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> At a certain point you just have to face the fact that you all need to move instead of trying to stop the ocean.
If the problem of rising sees is man made, can the solution be man made as well?
This problem isn't all that different from a a bigger powerful cities dumping their garbage next to smaller cities. And then telling the residents of smaller cities to move.
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A man-made solution is possible...but it even if an agreement were made and kept it would take to long that they'd be underwater decades before it was ready.
They didn't make the problem, but they have to live (or die) with it.
Also, expect the sea level rise to speed up rather than just not slow down. Ice on land is melting AND hot water expands. (And it's getting hotter, just ask the corals.)
Re:Got to face reality (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't just pick up and move a sovereign nation, unless some other country is willing to cede land to them.
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Sovereign nations don't move. People move. When enough people leave a sovereign nation they cease to exist. It has happened countless times in the past.
What is in a name anyway.
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> Sovereign nations don't move. People move. When enough people leave a sovereign nation they cease to exist. It has happened countless times in the past.
Yeah, we usually call those events genocides.
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Israel has entered the chat.
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> At a certain point you just have to face the fact that you all need to move instead of trying to stop the ocean.
*The Netherlands have entered the chat.
[thegarbz]: Fuck off The Netherlands you're not an island. It doesn't count that you defeated the ocean.
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Most of the Netherlands is not currently below sea level. It makes a big difference. (The mean altitude of the Netherlands is 30 meters. The mean altitude of Kiribati is 4.5 meters.)
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When your country is on an island, and that island is going to end up underwater, it's not as simple as saying, "don't live near the coast".
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So, if you live in a town that is on a river, you live far enough back from the water so you don't have to worry about storm flooding, but then a town upriver from you does something and suddenly that river is flooding YOUR house because of what other people did, that's not going to be a "don't live near a river" situation.
Scientists with pesky information (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry Kiribati we know you are hoping for a handout but...
Scientists at the University of Auckland found atolls in the Pacific nations of Marshall Islands and Kiribati, as well as the Maldives archipelago in the Indian Ocean, have grown up to 8 per cent in size over the past six decades despite sea level rise.
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> have grown up to 8 per cent in size over the past six decades despite sea level rise.
That is irrelevant. Sideways growth means nothing in comparison to vertical growth. If they haven't moved up into the air (which they haven't) they will be swallowed. I really don't care how big my land is if everywhere I walk I get my feet wet. That's the reality facing many of these places.
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> Sorry Kiribati we know you are hoping for a handout but...
> Scientists at the University of Auckland found atolls in the Pacific nations of Marshall Islands and Kiribati, as well as the Maldives archipelago in the Indian Ocean, have grown up to 8 per cent in size over the past six decades despite sea level rise.
Slightly more land doesn't help if it's unlivable because it's frequently flooded with seawater. The problem isn't so much that the islands will disappear under the surface but that the surface is getting closer to the highest and driest parts of the land, raising the water table, turning wells salty and causing it to be frequently inundated by flooding from storms (which are probably also getting more powerful due to warming).
Yes, these problems could be mitigated (not solved) by a few billion dollars w
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No. That would not solve the problem, because we are already committed to considerable sea level rise. (The exact amount is contentious.) A lot of the systems have considerable lag time, so we haven't experience all the rise we have already committed to. Even if we stop emitting CO2 today, the committed rise will happen. (And so far we've barely slowed down.)
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True, not only will the rise take a long time to reverse, it will take a long time even to stop, and that is true even if we somehow stopped emitting today, which we obviously aren't going to do. Kiribati is going to need help, or disappear. Probably both, frankly.
You live in a geopolitical hotspot! (Score:1)
Play the players! And don't' feel guilt, the players are also most responsible for causing your predicament. You float a proposal to raise the islands or build dykes to both the US and China with a 50 year lease on a naval base to the winning bidder. Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia already locked in deal so out of luck [1]https://responsiblestatecraft.... [responsibl...ecraft.org]
[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pacific-islands-us-military/
It would help to know... (Score:2)
How much the sea level has actually risen. No numbers in the article.
Excellent idea (Score:2)
Construct some giant balloons. Fasten them to Kiribati and inflate them with the hot air generated by the UN General Council.
We might have to work out a way to dump some excess lift. Because it's almost certain that the UN won't stop on its own.
What about Netherlands? (Score:2)
A good chunk of Netherlands lies below sea level and is vulnerable to flooding in case of big tides that can go over the dikes. Aren't they complaining?
Re:What about Netherlands? (Score:4, Interesting)
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_the_Netherlands
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What about this wiki page is it you want to point out to us? Leaving that link is like leaving a link to Google.
Re:What about Netherlands? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I understand it correctly, the Dutch are just as worried with sea level increases as other people. But they have some advantages, as their country is 1) mostly coastal, 2) very rich and 3) protected for at least some decades by infrastructure built last centuries.
In a nutshell, they will be severely affected if levels continue to rise at actual rate, but they have somewhere to run if things get ugly. The same doesn't happen with the island nations of the Pacific. They are going to disappear and their population will become "climate refugees".
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Kiribati has money from years of selling off phosphate mining rights.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Kind of a neat story out that way. Nauru is probably the most famous of these, but there's dozens of islands in the area that acted as rest stops of migratory birds, and as a result deposited millions of tons of bird shit and seeds on what was essentially volcanic rock, atolls, and uplifted reefs. Seeds do what seeds do and these grew into ecologies that covered up the bird shit.
In the late 1800's early 190
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Equalization_Reserve_Fund
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Your absolutely right. Population is around 132k. Comes out to about $7,620.21 per person. The only thing I think they could do here would be some science fiction, like drill down to the earths mantel and allow lava to flow and create new land mass, while the heat energy creates freshwater. Considering the crust is about 10 miles thick, ya, science fiction.
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This is a bit of a different situation. If the dikes used to hold back the sea need to be enlarged, that's one thing, but the ground water isn't being encroached upon by sea water making it into the normal ground water. For islands, they could put up all the sea walls they want, but if the source of their drinking water has sea water making its way in, under the ground, there's no solution for THAT, short of processing the water and distilling it. Plant life that would be killed by that sea water will
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First, yes, the Netherlands are worried. Second, this argument is flat-out (see what I did here?) wrong.
The Netherlands are in a unique position that does not exist elsewhere on Earth, and only those special conditions allowed the feat they accomplished.
High tides
Very flat coastline creating large mudlands
A net inflow of sand
Germany for instance, whose coast lies to the East of the Dutch coast, has nearly the same conditions (high tides, flat coastline), but a net loss of sand. Hence, Germany's atte