Guterres warns of rising sea levels in Los Angeles, Lagos and Asian megacities – 2024-08-29 12:33:50 – 2024-08-29 12:36:37 – 2024-08-29 12:38:22

UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Monday of the real threat of melting ice in Greenland and West Antarctica, which would endanger cities such as Los Angeles, Lagos and the Asian megacities of Shanghai, Mumbai and Dhaka.

Guterres was speaking on Tuesday in Tonga, the oceanic archipelago, during the 53rd summit of the Pacific Islands Leaders Forum, which is among the most threatened by the movement of the sea.

The Secretary-General, who has made the climate crisis one of the banners of his mandate, took for granted that the world’s sea level will rise by one metre, but insisted that “the scale, pace and impact” of this increase depends on human action.

“Greenhouse gases are cooking our planet, and the sea is literally bearing the brunt: it has absorbed more than 90 percent of global warming over the past 50 years,” he said, as the water “expands while getting warmer.”

This rise in sea level is ruining the fishing industry, drying up crops and contaminating drinking water, Guterres said, and although its consequences are most visible on the small Pacific islands, which are facing an existential threat, they will also affect nearly one billion people, those living in “coastal megacities”, including Los Angeles, Lagos and several Asian megalopolises.

Only by limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, in line with the commitments of the Paris Agreements, “will we have a fighting chance to prevent the irreversible collapse of Greenland and West Antarctica,” he specified, “that means cutting current emissions by 43% compared to 2019 levels by 2030, and by 60% by 2035.”

The Portuguese politician stressed that action must be led by the G20 countries, which are “the largest emitters (they produce 80% of greenhouse gases) and have the greatest capacity and responsibility to take the lead.”

These countries must first “fulfill their promises made at COP28 to triple renewable energy capacity, double energy efficiency and end deforestation by 2030,” and also boost global financing for climate adaptation to $40 billion by 2025.

True to form, Guterres concluded with a warning that was somewhere between literary and alarmist: the climate crisis “is going to swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety. But if we save the Pacific, we save ourselves,” he concluded.