The United Nations unanimously adopted a declaration on Thursday calling for stronger action to tackle rising sea levels. The crisis, caused by global warming and the melting of ice sheets and glaciers, has become a threat to the existence of low-lying island nations.
Global sea levels rose by about 6 millimetres in 2024, the largest rise recorded in a single year. Without major action, sea levels could rise by a metre or more by the end of this century.
“Sea-level rise is measured in millimetres. But its damage is measured in millions of lives upended, communities uprooted and futures lost,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said.
“We cannot allow nations and cultures to vanish beneath the waves. We cannot let the aspirations of hundreds of millions of people be drowned,” he said.
The declaration aims to create new momentum in tackling sea-level rise. It stresses cutting greenhouse gas emissions and financing to strengthen vulnerable countries’ plans to build resilience.
It also addresses the legal questions of what happens if a country gradually begins to disappear beneath the sea.
The declaration says maritime boundaries will remain in place even if coastlines retreat, and that once a state has been established, it does not lose its statehood simply because one of its fundamental elements disappears.
Speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States, Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr said: “For states whose very existence is defined by the ocean around us, sea-level rise will have life-changing effects.”
He said small island states have been warning about global warming and sea-level rise since the 1989 Malé Declaration and have also helped shape international law on the issue. He welcomed the declaration as “a real achievement”.
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