UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yesterday sent out a global climate “SOS” at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga, unveiling research that shows the region’s seas rising much more swiftly than global averages.
“I am in Tonga to issue a global SOS — Save Our Seas — on rising sea levels. A worldwide catastrophe is putting this Pacific paradise in peril,” Guterres said.
Sparsely populated and with few heavy industries, Pacific island nations collectively pump out less than 0.02 percent of global emissions every year, but the vast arc of volcanic islands and low-lying coral atolls also inhabit a tropical corridor that is rapidly threatened by the encroaching ocean.
Photo: AFP
The World Meteorological Organization has been monitoring tide gauges installed on the Pacific’s famed beaches since the early 1990s. A new report released by the top UN climate monitoring body showed seas had risen by about 15cm in some parts of the Pacific in the past 30 years.
The global average was 9.4cm, the report said.
“It is increasingly evident that we are fast running out of time to turn the tide,” said Celeste Saulo, the forecasting agency’s top official.
Some sites, particularly in Kiribati and the Cook Islands, measured a rise that matched or was just under the global average, but other sites, such as the capital cities of Samoa and Fiji, were rising almost three times higher.
In low-lying Pacific island nation Tuvalu, land is already so scarce that throngs of children use the tarmac at the international airport as their own makeshift playground. Scientists have warned that, even under some moderate scenarios, Tuvalu could be almost entirely wiped off the map within the next 30 years.
“It’s disaster after disaster, and we are losing the capacity to rebuild, to withstand another cyclone or another flood,” Tuvaluan Minister for Home Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Maina Talia said on Monday on the sidelines of the forum. “For low-lying island states, it’s a matter of survival for us.”
The plight of the Pacific island nations has been easily overlooked in the past, given their relative isolation and lack of economic might, but the region is increasingly seen by scientists as a climate canary in the coal mine, hinting at the trouble potentially facing other parts of the planet.
“This new report confirms what Pacific leaders have been saying for years,” Australian climate researcher Wes Morgan said. “Climate change is their top security threat. Pacific nations are in a fight for survival, and cutting climate pollution is key to their future.”
Surrounded by millions of square kilometers of tropical ocean, the South Pacific is uniquely threatened by sea-level rise. The vast majority of people live within 5km of the coast, according to the UN.
Rising seas are swallowing up scarce land, and tainting vital food and water sources.
Warmer waters are also fueling more intense natural disasters, while ocean acidification kills the reefs that nourish marine food chains.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
UPDATED FORECAST: The warning covered areas of Pingtung County and Hengchun Peninsula, while a sea warning covering the southern Taiwan Strait was amended The Central Weather Administration (CWA) at 5:30pm yesterday issued a land warning for Typhoon Usagi as the storm approached Taiwan from the south after passing over the Philippines. As of 5pm, Usagi was 420km south-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost tip, with an average radius of 150km, the CWA said. The land warning covered areas of Pingtung County and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春), and came with an amended sea warning, updating a warning issued yesterday morning to cover the southern part of the Taiwan Strait. No local governments had announced any class or office closures as of press time last night. The typhoon
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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