SYDNEY & NUKU’ALOFA, Aug 30 (IPS) – Three months ahead of the United Nations (UN) COP29 Climate Change Conference, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called on the international community for an emergency response as new data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveal a serious deterioration in the state of the climate.
Scientists have called for limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to avoid overheating the atmosphere and damaging sea level rise. But lack of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions means there is an 80 percent chance the 1.5-degree threshold will be breached within the next five years, the WMO said.
“This is an insane situation: rising sea levels are a crisis entirely of human origin. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale with no lifeboat to bring us back to safety,” the UN secretary-general said Monday in Nuku’alofa, the capital of Tonga, a Polynesian nation of about 106,000 people southeast of Fiji. He was on the ground in the Pacific Islands and saw firsthand how people’s lives were hanging by a thread as they faced a relentless barrage of climate extremes, including cyclones, floods, rising sea levels and warmer temperatures.
“Today’s reports confirm that relative sea level in the southwestern Pacific has risen even more than the global average, in some locations more than double the global rate of rise over the past 30 years,” Guterres said“If we save the Pacific, we will save ourselves. The world must act and answer the SOS before it is too late.”
According to a recently released UN report, Surging Seas in a Warming World, the global mean sea level rise was 9.4 cm, but in the southwestern Pacific it was more than 15 cm between 1993 and 2023. Expanding oceans, resulting from melting Arctic and Antarctic ice, are expected to “cause large increases in the frequency and severity of episodic flooding events at almost all locations in Pacific small island developing states in the coming decades.” Ninety percent of Pacific Islanders live within 5 kilometers of the coastline, making them highly exposed to advancing seas. The impacts of climate change pose a serious threat to human life, livelihoods and food security, and the implications for increasing poverty and loss and damage are “profound and far-reaching,” the report claims.
For years, Pacific Island leaders have been at the forefront of calling on world leaders and industrialized nations to take drastic measures to halt the rising carbon dioxide emissions that are destroying the Earth’s atmosphere. In Tonga, the Secretary-General joined many of them in the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ summit on 26-27 August, including summit host and Prime Minister of Tonga, Hon. Siaosi Sovaleni, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, James Marape, Leader of Samoa, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa and Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Feleti Teo. And he used the opportunity to amplify their voices and climate leadership. ‘Greenhouse gases are causing ocean warming, acidification and rising sea levels. But the Pacific Islands are showing how we can protect our climate, our planet and our ocean,’ he said.
The UN chief took time to listen to the voices of local communities and youth, gaining valuable insights into how the people of Tonga are responding to climate extremes and disasters.
In January 2022, a tsunami caused by the eruption of an undersea volcano known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai descended on Tonga. It reached the main island of Tongatapu and other islands, affecting 80 percent of the country’s population, destroying livestock and farmland and causing more than $125 million in damage. Guterres met people in the coastal villages of Kanokupolu and Ha’atafu, which were devastated when the tsunami ripped through, and surveyed the ruins of resorts and coastal infrastructure as he witnessed the resilience and determination of those who have rebuilt their homes and lives.
Two years ago, the UN also launched ‘Early Warnings for All’, a project that aims to install early warning systems in every country by 2027 to save lives and prevent harm.
“With the increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones and floods, a simple weather forecast is not enough for people to prepare for these natural disasters,” Arti Pratap, a tropical cyclone expert who teaches Geospatial Science at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, told IPS. She said it was important to “focus on building the capacity of communities to use the information provided by national meteorological services in the Pacific on an hourly, daily and monthly basis for decision-making.”
Many farmers, for example, “tend to rely on readily available traditional knowledge about weather and climate and its interaction with the environment around them, which they are familiar with. However, traditional knowledge may not be sufficient in the context of global warming,” Pratap said.
The UN initiative involves setting up meteorological observation stations, ocean sensors and radars to better predict extreme weather and disasters. According to the UN, giving 24 hours’ notice of an impending disaster can reduce damage by 30 percent. As part of the project, Guterres launched a new weather radar at Tonga’s International Airport.
His week-long tour of the Pacific island nation, which also included Samoa, New Zealand and East Timor, was an opportune moment for Guterres to open talks on the goals to be achieved at COP29, which will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11 to 22.
Key priorities for this year’s climate summit include limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and achieving broad agreement on the scale and provision of climate finance. “The one thing that is very clear in my presence here is that I can say loud and clear from the Pacific Islands to the major emitters that it is completely unacceptable, with devastating consequences for climate change, to continue to increase emissions,” Guterres said in Nuku’alofa on August 26, 2024.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSPETGYf36s
And for many Pacific Islanders, gaining better access to climate finance is vital. The development organization Pacific Community reports that the region needs at least $2 billion a year to implement climate resilience and adaptation projects and transition to renewable energy. This far exceeds what the Pacific currently receives in climate finance, which is around $220 million a year.
“Despite the laudable commitments made by the United Nations and world leaders, such as the Paris Climate Agreement, existing global funding mechanisms still prevent local and youth organisations from accessing crucial support,” Mahoney Mori, chair of the Pacific Youth Council, told local media during a meeting between the UN chief and leaders of the Pacific Youth Council in the capital of Tonga.
“As a first step, all developed countries must fulfil their commitment to double adaptation finance to at least $40 billion per year by 2025,” the UN Secretary-General said on World Environment Day on June 24.
Tonga’s prime minister summed up the views of many in the Pacific as world attention turned to his island nation with the visit of the UN secretary-general: “We need much more action than just words,” he told the Pacific leaders’ meeting. Referring to a small earthquake that shook the islands as leaders gathered in Tonga, he added: “We put on a show with the rain and a little bit of flooding and also gave you a little bit of a wake-up call with that earthquake, just to wake you up to the reality of what we’re going through here in the Pacific.”
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service