There’s an interesting video at the UK Guardian website about the potential impacts that sea level rise caused by climate change could have on the Caribbean. I can’t embed it here, unfortunately, but here’s an excerpt from the voice over:
The Bahamas, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Belize are anticipated to suffer the greatest overall economic losses. With a one metre level in sea rise, nearly 1300 square kilometres of land will be lost… Over 100,00 people will be displaced, a figure that jumps to 260,000 with a two metre sea level rise. Damages in the 15 CARICOM countries could amount to 4- 6 billion US dollars a year. These stark images and figures show just why the Alliance of Small Island States are lobbying at Cancun to keep temperature rises below 1.5ºC, far lower than the 2º accepted by over 100 countries at Copenhagen last year.
Click here to see the video for yourself.
The Google Maps flythrough in the video was produced by CARIBSAVE. According to the CARIBSAVE website:
CARIBSAVE is a partnership between the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) and the University of Oxford. The CARIBSAVE Partnership addresses the impacts and challenges surrounding climate change, tourism, the environment, economic development and community livelihoods across the Caribbean Basin, using an integrated and holistic approach.
Visit caribsave.org to find out more.
Excellent work, excellent article !
Let me write a few comments on legal and social context.
While the Earth has always endured natural climate change variability, we are now facing the possibility of irreversible climate change in the near future. The increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth?s atmosphere from industrial processes has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect. This in turn has accentuated the greenhouse ?trap? effect, causing greenhouse gases to form a blanket around the Earth, inhibiting the sun?s heat from leaving the outer atmosphere. This increase of greenhouse gases is causing an additional warming of the Earth?s surface and atmosphere. A direct consequence of this is sea-level rise expansion, which is primarily due to the thermal expansion of oceans (water expands when heated), inducing the melting of ice sheets as global surface temperature increases.
Forecasts for climate change by the 2,000 scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project a rise in the global average surface temperature by 1.4 to 5.8°C from 1990 to 2100. This will result in a global mean sea level rise by an average of 5 mm per year over the next 100 years. Consequently, human-induced climate change will have ?deleterious effects? on ecosystems, socio-economic systems and human welfare.At the moment, especially high risks associated with the rise of the oceans are having a particular impact on the two archipelagic states of Western Polynesia: Tuvalu and Kiribati. According to UN forecasts, they may be completely inundated by the rising waters of the Pacific by 2050.According to the vast majority of scientific investigations, warming waters and the melting of polar and high-elevation ice worldwide will steadily raise sea levels. This will likely drive people off islands first by spoiling the fresh groundwater, which will kill most land plants and leave no potable water for humans and their livestock.
Low-lying island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives are the most prominent nations threatened in this way.“The biggest challenge is to preserve their nationality without a territory,” said Bogumil Terminski from Geneva. The best solution is continue to recognize deterritorialized states as a normal states in public international law. The case of Kiribati and other small island states is a particularly clear call to action for more secure countries to respond to the situations facing these ‘most vulnerable nations’, as climate change increasingly impacts upon their lives.